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Final paper grading: The paper is graded on your understanding of the assigned readings and the lectures as well as on your ability to write in a clear and concise manner. You are neither required not encouraged to use sources other than the assigned readings and lecture slides. Final paper guidance: For general guidance on writing philosophy papers please consult the Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper. Please also read Plagiarism – Policies and Definitions. both texts are available at the top of the course website in the “Course Information” module. topic：Explain the the extended mind (cognition) thesis and some of the objections to the thesis. Do you agree with Clark and Chalmers that the mind can extend beyond just the skully and the body? Explain your answers.

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Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy
Paper
Philosophical writing is different from the writing you’ll be asked to do in other courses. Most of the
strategies described below will also serve you well when writing for other courses, but don’t
automatically assume that they all will. Nor should you assume that every writing guideline you’ve been
given by other teachers is important when you’re writing a philosophy paper. Some of those guidelines
are routinely violated in good philosophical prose (e.g., see the guidelines on grammar, below).
Contents
What Does One Do in a Philosophy Paper?
Three Stages of Writing
Early Stages
Write a Draft
Rewrite, and Keep Rewriting
Minor Points
How You’ll Be Graded
What Does One Do in a Philosophy Paper?
1. A philosophy paper consists of the reasoned defense of some claim
Your paper must offer an argument. It can’t consist in the mere report of your opinions, nor in a
mere report of the opinions of the philosophers we discuss. You have to defend the claims you
make. You have to offer reasons to believe them.
So you can’t just say:
My view is that P.
You must say something like:
My view is that P. I believe this because…
or:
I find that the following considerations…provide a convincing argument for
P.
Similarly, don’t just say:
Descartes says that Q.
Instead, say something like:
Descartes says that Q; however, the following thought‐experiment will show
that Q is not true…
or:
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Descartes says that Q. I find this claim plausible, for the following
reasons…
There are a variety of things a philosophy paper can aim to accomplish. It usually begins by
putting some thesis or argument on the table for consideration. Then it goes on to do one or two of
the following:
Criticize that argument; or show that certain arguments for the thesis are no good
Defend the argument or thesis against someone else’s criticism
Offer reasons to believe the thesis
Offer counterexamples
to the thesis
Contrast the strengths and weaknesses of two opposing views about the thesis
Give examples which help explain the thesis, or which help to make the thesis more
plausible
Argue that certain philosophers are committed to the thesis by their other views, though they
do not come out and explicitly endorse the thesis
Discuss what consequences the thesis would have, if it were true
Revise the thesis, in the light of some objection
No matter which of these aims you set for yourself, you have to explicitly present reasons for
the claims you make. Students often feel that since it’s clear to them that some claim is true, it
does not need much argument. But it’s very easy to overestimate the strength of your own position.
After all, you already accept it. You should assume that your audience does not already accept
your position; and you should treat your paper as an attempt to persuade such an audience. Hence,
don’t start with assumptions which your opponents are sure to reject. If you’re to have any chance
of persuading people, you have to start from common assumptions you all agree to.
2. A good philosophy paper is modest and makes a small point; but it makes that point clearly and
straightforwardly, and it offers good reasons in support of it
People very often attempt to accomplish too much in a philosophy paper. The usual result of this is
a paper that’s hard to read, and which is full of inadequately defended and poorly explained claims.
So don’t be overambitious.
Don’t try to establish any earthshattering
conclusions in your 56
page
paper. Done properly, philosophy moves at a slow pace.
3. Originality
The aim of these papers is for you to show that you understand the material and that you’re able to
think critically about it. To do this, your paper does have to show some independent thinking.
That doesn’t mean you have to come up with your own theory, or that you have to make a
completely original contribution to human thought. There will be plenty of time for that later on.
An ideal paper will be clear and straightforward (see below), will be accurate when it attributes
views to other philosophers (see below), and will contain thoughtful critical responses to the texts
we read. It need not always break completely new ground.
But you should try to come up with your own arguments, or your own way of elaborating or
criticizing or defending some argument we looked at in class. Merely summarizing what others
have said won’t be enough.
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Three Stages of Writing
1. Early Stages
The early stages of writing a philosophy paper include everything you do before you sit down and write
your first draft. These early stages will involve writing, but you won’t yet be trying to write a complete
paper. You should instead be taking notes on the readings, sketching out your ideas, trying to explain the
main argument you want to advance, and composing an outline.
Discuss the issues with others
As I said above, your papers are supposed to demonstrate that you understand and can think critically
about the material we discuss in class. One of the best ways to check how well you understand that
material is to try to explain it to someone who isn’t already familiar with it. I’ve discovered time and
again while teaching philosophy that I couldn’t really explain properly some article or argument I thought
I understood. This was because it was really more problematic or complicated than I had realized. You
will have this same experience. So it’s good to discuss the issues we raise in class with each other, and
with friends who aren’t taking the class. This will help you understand the issues better, and it will make
you recognize what things you still don’t fully understand.
It’s even more valuable to talk to each other about what you want to argue in your paper. When you have
your ideas worked out well enough that you can explain them to someone else, verbally, then you’re
ready to sit down and start making an outline.
Make an outline
Before you begin writing any drafts, you need to think about the questions: In what order should you
explain the various terms and positions you’ll be discussing? At what point should you present your
opponent’s position or argument? In what order should you offer your criticisms of your opponent? Do
any of the points you’re making presuppose that you’ve already discussed some other point, first? And so
on.
The overall clarity of your paper will greatly depend on its structure. That is why it is important to think
about these questions before you begin to write.
I strongly recommend that you make an outline of your paper, and of the arguments you’ll be presenting,
before you begin to write. This lets you organize the points you want to make in your paper and get a
sense for how they are going to fit together. It also helps ensure that you’re in a position to say what your
main argument or criticism is, before you sit down to write a full draft of your paper. When students get
stuck writing, it’s often because they haven’t yet figured out what they’re trying to say.
Give your outline your full attention. It should be fairly detailed. (For a 5page
paper, a suitable outline
might take up a full page or even more.)
I find that making an outline is at least 80% of the work of writing a good philosophy paper. If you have
a good outline, the rest of the writing process will go much more smoothly.
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Start Work Early
Philosophical problems and philosophical writing require careful and extended reflection. Don’t wait
until two or three nights before the paper is due to begin. That is very stupid. Writing a good philosophy
paper takes a great deal of preparation.
You need to leave yourself enough time to think about the topic and write a detailed outline. Only then
should you sit down to write a complete draft. Once you have a complete draft, you should set it aside for
a day or two. Then you should come back to it and rewrite it. Several times. At least 3 or 4. If you can,
show it to your friends and get their reactions to it. Do they understand your main point? Are parts of
your draft unclear or confusing to them?
All of this takes time. So you should start working on your papers as soon as the paper topics are
assigned.
2. Write a Draft
Once you’ve thought about your argument, and written an outline for your paper, then you’re ready to sit
down and compose a complete draft.
Use simple prose
Don’t shoot for literary elegance. Use simple, straightforward prose. Keep your sentences and paragraphs
short. Use familiar words. We’ll make fun of you if you use big words where simple words will do. These
issues are deep and difficult enough without your having to muddy them up with pretentious or verbose
language. Don’t write using prose you wouldn’t use in conversation: if you wouldn’t say it, don’t
write it.
You may think that since your TA and I already know a lot about this subject, you can leave out a lot of
basic explanation and write in a supersophisticated
manner, like one expert talking to another. I
guarantee you that this will make your paper incomprehensible.
If your paper sounds as if it were written for a thirdgrade
audience, then you’ve probably achieved the
right sort of clarity.
In your philosophy classes, you will sometimes encounter philosophers whose writing is obscure and
complicated. Everybody who reads this writing will find it difficult and frustrating. The authors in
question are philosophically important despite their poor writing, not because of it. So do not try to
emulate their writing styles.
Make the structure of your paper obvious
You should make the structure of your paper obvious to the reader. Your reader shouldn’t have to exert
any effort to figure it out. Beat him over the head with it.
How can you do this?
First of all, use connective words, like:
because, since, given this argument
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thus, therefore, hence, it follows that, consequently
nevertheless, however, but
in the first case, on the other hand
These will help your reader keep track of where your discussion is going. Be sure you use these words
correctly! If you say “P. Thus Q.” then you are claiming that P is a good reason to accept Q. You had
better be right. If you aren’t, we’ll complain. Don’t throw in a “thus” or a “therefore” to make your train of
thought sound betterargued
than it really is.
Another way you can help make the structure of your paper obvious is by telling the reader what you’ve
done so far and what you’re going to do next. You can say things like:
I will begin by…
Before I say what is wrong with this argument, I want to…
These passages suggest that…
I will now defend this claim…
Further support for this claim comes from…
For example…
These signposts really make a big difference. Consider the following two paper fragments:
…We’ve just seen how X says that P. I will now present two arguments that not‐
P. My first argument is…
My second argument that not‐P is…
X might respond to my arguments in several ways. For instance, he could say
that…
However this response fails, because…
Another way that X might respond to my arguments is by claiming that…
This response also fails, because…
So we have seen that none of X’s replies to my argument that not‐P succeed.
Hence, we should reject X’s claim that P.
I will argue for the view that Q.
There are three reasons to believe Q. Firstly…
Secondly…
Thirdly…
The strongest objection to Q says…
However, this objection does not succeed, for the following reason…
Isn’t it easy to see what the structure of these papers is? You want it to be just as easy in your own papers.
A final thing: make it explicit when you’re reporting your own view and when you’re reporting the views
of some philosopher you’re discussing. The reader should never be in doubt about whose claims you’re
presenting in a given paragraph.
You can’t make the structure of your paper obvious if you don’t know what the structure of your paper is,
or if your paper has no structure. That’s why making an outline is so important.
Be concise, but explain yourself fully
To write a good philosophy paper, you need to be concise but at the same time explain yourself fully.
These demands might seem to pull in opposite directions. (It’s as if the first said “Don’t talk too much,”
and the second said “Talk a lot.”) If you understand these demands properly, though, you’ll see how it’s
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possible to meet them both.
We tell you to be concise because we don’t want you to ramble on about everything you know
about a given topic, trying to show how learned and intelligent you are. Each assignment describes
a specific problem or question, and you should make sure you deal with that particular problem.
Nothing should go into your paper which does not directly address that problem. Prune out
everything else. It is always better to concentrate on one or two points and develop them in depth
than to try to cram in too much. One or two wellmapped
paths are better than an impenetrable
jungle.
Formulate the central problem or question you wish to address at the beginning of your paper, and
keep it in mind at all times. Make it clear what the problem is, and why it is a problem. Be sure that
everything you write is relevant to that central problem. In addition, be sure to say in the paper how
it is relevant. Don’t make your reader guess.
One thing I mean by “explain yourself fully” is that, when you have a good point, you shouldn’t
just toss it off in one sentence. Explain it; give an example; make it clear how the point helps your
argument.
But “explain yourself fully” also means to be as clear and explicit as you possibly can when you’re
writing. It’s no good to protest, after we’ve graded your paper, “I know I said this, but what I
meant was…” Say exactly what you mean, in the first place. Part of what you’re being graded on is
how well you can do that.
Pretend that your reader has not read the material you’re discussing, and has not given the topic
much thought in advance. This will of course not be true. But if you write as if it were true, it will
force you to explain any technical terms, to illustrate strange or obscure distinctions, and to be as
explicit as possible when you summarize what some other philosopher said.
In fact, you can profitably take this one step further and pretend that your reader is lazy, stupid, and
mean. He’s lazy in that he doesn’t want to figure out what your convoluted sentences are supposed
to mean, and he doesn’t want to figure out what your argument is, if it’s not already obvious. He’s
stupid, so you have to explain everything you say to him in simple, bitesized
pieces. And he’s
mean, so he’s not going to read your paper charitably. (For example, if something you say admits of
more than one interpretation, he’s going to assume you meant the less plausible thing.) If you
understand the material you’re writing about, and if you aim your paper at such a reader, you’ll
probably get an A.
Use plenty of examples and definitions
It is very important to use examples in a philosophy paper. Many of the claims philosophers make are
very abstract and hard to understand, and examples are the best way to make those claims clearer.
Examples are also useful for explaining the notions that play a central role in your argument. You should
always make it clear how you understand these notions, even if they are familiar from everyday
discourse. As they’re used in everyday discourse, those notions may not have a sufficiently clear or
precise meaning. For instance, suppose you’re writing a paper about abortion, and you want to assert the
claim “A fetus is a person.” What do you mean by “a person”? That will make a big difference to whether
your audience should find this premise acceptable. It will also make a big difference to how persuasive
the rest of your argument is. By itself, the following argument is pretty worthless:
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A fetus is a person.
It’s wrong to kill a person.
Therefore, it’s wrong to kill a fetus.
For we don’t know what the author means by calling a fetus “a person.” On some interpretations of
“person,” it might be quite obvious that a fetus is a person; but quite controversial whether it’s always
wrong to kill persons, in that sense of “person.” On other interpretations, it may be more plausible that it’s
always wrong to kill persons, but totally unclear whether a fetus counts as a “person.” So everything
turns here on what the author means by “person.” The author should be explicit about how he is using
this notion.
In a philosophy paper, it’s okay to use words in ways that are somewhat different from the ways they’re
ordinarily used. You just have to make it clear that you’re doing this. For instance, some philosophers use
the word “person” to mean any being which is capable of rational thought and selfawareness.
Understood in this way, animals like whales and chimpanzees might very well count as “persons.” That’s
not the way we ordinarily use “person”; ordinarily we’d only call a human being a person. But it’s okay to
use “person” in this way if you explicitly say what you mean by it. And likewise for other words.
Don’t vary your vocabulary just for the sake of variety
If you call something “X” at the start of your paper, call it “X” all the way through. So, for
instance, don’t start talking about “Plato’s view of the self,” and then switch to talking about
“Plato’s view of the soul,” and then switch to talking about “Plato’s view of the mind.” If you mean
to be talking about the same thing in all three cases, then call it by the same name. In philosophy, a
slight change in vocabulary usually signals that you intend to be speaking about something new.
Using words with precise philosophical meanings
Philosophers give many ordinarysounding
words precise technical meanings. Consult the
handouts on Philosophical Terms and Methods to make sure you’re using these words correctly.
Don’t use words that you don’t fully understand.
Use technical philosophical terms only where you need them. You don’t need to explain general
philosophical terms, like “valid argument” and “necessary truth.” But you should explain any
technical terms you use which bear on the specific topic you’re discussing. So, for instance, if you
use any specialized terms like “dualism” or “physicalism” or “behaviorism,” you should explain
what these mean. Likewise if you use technical terms like “supervenience” and the like. Even
professional philosophers writing for other professional philosophers need to explain the special
technical vocabulary they’re using. Different people sometimes use this special vocabulary in
different ways, so it’s important to make sure that you and your readers are all giving these words
the same meaning. Pretend that your readers have never heard them before.
Presenting and assessing the views of others
If you plan to discuss the views of Philosopher X, begin by figuring out what his arguments or central
assumptions are. See my tips on How To Read a Philosophy Paper for some help doing this.
Then ask yourself: Are X’s arguments good ones? Are his assumptions clearly stated? Are they plausible?
Are they reasonable startingpoints
for X’s argument, or ought he have provided some independent
argument for them?
Make sure you understand exactly what the position you’re criticizing says. Students waste a lot of time
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arguing against views that sound like, but are really different from, the views they’re supposed to be
assessing. Remember, philosophy demands a high level of precision. It’s not good enough for you merely
to get the general idea of somebody else’s position or argument. You have to get it exactly right. (In this
respect, philosophy is more like a science than the other humanities.) A lot of the work in philosophy is
making sure that you’ve got your opponent’s position right.
You can assume that your reader is stupid (see above). But don’t treat the philosopher or the views you’re
discussing as stupid. If they were stupid, we wouldn’t be looking at them. If you can’t see anything the
view has going for it, maybe that’s because you don’t have much experience thinking and arguing about
the view, and so you haven’t yet fully understood why the view’s proponents are attracted to it. Try harder
to figure out what’s motivating them.
Philosophers sometimes do say outrageous things, but if the view you’re attributing to a philosopher
seems to be obviously crazy, then you should think hard about whether he really does say what you think
he says. Use your imagination. Try to figure out what reasonable position the philosopher could have had
in mind, and direct your arguments against that.
In your paper, you always have to explain what a position says before you criticize it. If you don’t explain
what you take Philosopher X’s view to be, your reader cannot judge whether the criticism you offer of X
is a good criticism, or whether it is simply based on a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of X’s views.
So tell the reader what it is you think X is saying.
Don’t try to tell the reader everything you know about X’s views, though. You have to go on to offer your
own philosophical contribution, too. Only summarize those parts of X’s views that are directly
relevant to what you’re going to go on to do.
Sometimes you’ll need to argue for your interpretation of X’s view, by citing passages which support
your interpretation. It is permissible for you to discuss a view you think a philosopher might have held, or
should have held, though you can’t find any direct evidence of that view in the text. When you do this,
though, you should explicitly say so. Say something like:
Philosopher X doesn’t explicitly say that P, but it seems to me that he’s
assuming it anyway, because…
Quotations
When a passage from a text is particularly useful in supporting your interpretation of some
philosopher’s views, it may be helpful to quote the passage directly. (Be sure to specify where the
passage can be found.) However, direct quotations should be used sparingly. It is seldom necessary
to quote more than a few sentences. Often it will be more appropriate to paraphrase what X says,
rather than to quote him directly. When you are paraphrasing what somebody else said, be sure to
say so. (And here too, cite the pages you’re referring to.)
Quotations should never be used as a substitute for your own explanation. And when you do quote
an author, you still have to explain what the quotation says in your own words. If the quoted
passage contains an argument, reconstruct the argument in more explicit, straightforward terms. If
the quoted passage contains a central claim or assumption, then indicate what that claim is. You
may want to give some examples to illustrate the author’s point. If necessary, you may want to
distinguish the author’s claim from other claims with which it might be confused.
Paraphrases
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Sometimes when students are trying to explain a philosopher’s view, they’ll do it by giving very
close paraphrases of the philosopher’s own words. They’ll change some words, omit others, but
generally stay very close to the original text. For instance, Hume begins his Treatise of Human
Nature as follows:
All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct
kinds, which I shall call impressions and ideas. The difference betwixt
these consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they
strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness.
Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name
impressions; and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions,
and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I
mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning.
Here’s an example of how you don’t want to paraphrase:
Hume says all perceptions of the mind are resolved into two kinds,
impressions and ideas. The difference is in how much force and liveliness
they have in our thoughts and consciousness. The perceptions with the most
force and violence are impressions. These are sensations, passions, and
emotions. Ideas are the faint images of our thinking and reasoning.
There are two main problems with paraphrases of this sort. In the first place, it’s done rather
mechanically, so it doesn’t show that the author understands the text. In the second place, since the
author hasn’t figured out what the text means well enough to express it in his own words, there’s a
danger that his paraphrase may inadvertently change the meaning of the text. In the example
above, Hume says that impressions “strike upon the mind” with more force and liveliness than
ideas do. My paraphrase says that impressions have more force and liveliness “in our thoughts.” It’s
not clear whether these are the same thing. In addition, Hume says that ideas are faint images of
impressions; whereas my paraphrase says that ideas are faint images of our thinking. These are not
the same. So the author of the paraphrase appears not to have understood what Hume was saying in
the original passage.
A much better way of explaining what Hume says here would be the following:
Hume says that there are two kinds of ‘perceptions,’ or mental states. He
calls these impressions and ideas. An impression is a very ‘forceful’ mental
state, like the sensory impression one has when looking at a red apple. An
idea is a less ‘forceful’ mental state, like the idea one has of an apple
while just thinking about it, rather than looking at it. It is not so clear
what Hume means here by ‘forceful.’ He might mean…
Anticipate objections
Try to anticipate objections to your view and respond to them. For instance, if you object to some
philosopher’s view, don’t assume he would immediately admit defeat. Imagine what his comeback might
be. How would you handle that comeback?
Don’t be afraid of mentioning objections to your own thesis. It is better to bring up an objection yourself
than to hope your reader won’t think of it. Explain how you think these objections can be countered or
overcome. Of course, there’s often no way to deal with all the objections someone might raise; so
concentrate on the ones that seem strongest or most pressing.
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What happens if you’re stuck?
Your paper doesn’t always have to provide a definite solution to a problem, or a straight yes or no answer
to a question. Many excellent philosophy papers don’t offer straight yes or no answers. Sometimes they
argue that the question needs to be clarified, or that certain further questions need to be raised.
Sometimes they argue that certain assumptions of the question need to be challenged. Sometimes they
argue that certain answers to the question are too easy, that is, they won’t work. Hence, if these papers are
right, the question will be harder to answer than we might previously have thought. These are all
important and philosophically valuable results.
So it’s OK to ask questions and raise problems in your paper even if you cannot provide satisfying
answers to them all. You can leave some questions unanswered at the end of the paper. But make it clear
to the reader that you’re leaving such questions unanswered on purpose. And you should say something
about how the question might be answered, and about what makes the question interesting and relevant to
the issue at hand.
If something in a view you’re examining is unclear to you, don’t gloss it over. Call attention to the
unclarity. Suggest several different ways of understanding the view. Explain why it’s not clear which of
these interpretations is correct.
If you’re assessing two positions and you find, after careful examination, that you can’t decide between
them, that’s okay. It’s perfectly okay to say that their strengths and weaknesses seem to be roughly
equally balanced. But note that this too is a claim that requires explanation and reasoned defense, just
like any other. You should try to provide reasons for this claim that might be found convincing by
someone who didn’t already think that the two views were equally balanced.
Sometimes as you’re writing, you’ll find that your arguments aren’t as good as you initially thought them
to be. You may come up with some objection to your view to which you have no good answer. Don’t
panic. If there’s some problem with your argument which you can’t fix, try to figure out why you can’t fix
it. It’s okay to change your thesis to one you can defend. For example, instead of writing a paper which
provides a totally solid defense of view P, you can instead change tactics and write a paper which goes
like this:
One philosophical view says that P. This is a plausible view, for the following
reasons…
However, there are some reasons to be doubtful whether P. One of these reasons is
X. X poses a problem for the view that P because…
It is not clear how the defender of P can overcome this objection.
Or you can write a paper which goes:
One argument for P is the ‘Conjunction Argument,’ which goes as follows…
At first glance, this is a very appealing argument. However, this argument is
faulty, for the following reasons…
One might try to repair the argument, by…
But these repairs will not work, because…
I conclude that the Conjunction Argument does not in fact succeed in establishing
P.
Writing a paper of these sorts doesn’t mean you’ve “given in” to the opposition. After all, neither of these
papers commits you to the view that notP.
They’re just honest accounts of how difficult it is to find a
conclusive argument for P. P might still be true, for all that.
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3. Rewrite, and Keep Rewriting
Now you’ve written a complete draft of your paper. Set the draft aside for a day or two.
Then come back to the draft and reread
it. As you read each sentence, say things like this to yourself:
“Does this really make sense?” “That’s totally unclear!” “That sounds
pretentious.” “What does that mean?” “What’s the connection between these two
sentences?” “Am I just repeating myself here?” and so on.
Make sure every sentence in your draft does useful work. Get rid of any which don’t. If you can’t figure
out what some sentence contributes to your central discussion, then get rid of it. Even if it sounds nice.
You should never introduce any points in your paper unless they’re important to your main argument, and
you have the room to really explain them.
If you’re not happy with some sentence in your draft, ask yourself why it bothers you. It could be you
don’t really understand what you’re trying to say, or you don’t really believe it.
Make sure your sentences say exactly what you want them to say. For example, suppose you write
“Abortion is the same thing as murder.” Is that what you really mean? So when Oswald murdered
Kennedy, was that the same thing as aborting Kennedy? Or do you mean something different? Perhaps
you mean that abortion is a form of murder. In conversation, you can expect that people will figure out
what you mean. But you shouldn’t write this way. Even if your TA is able to figure out what you mean,
it’s bad writing. In philosophical prose, you have to be sure to say exactly what you mean.
Also pay attention to the structure of your draft. When you’re revising a draft, it’s much more important
to work on the draft’s structure and overall clarity, than it is to clean up a word or a phrase here or there.
Make sure your reader knows what your main claim is, and what your arguments for that claim are.
Make sure that your reader can tell what the point of every paragraph is. It’s not enough that you know
what their point is. It has to be obvious to your reader, even to a lazy, stupid, and mean reader.
If you can, show your draft to your friends or to other students in the class, and get their comments and
advice. I encourage you to do this. Do your friends understand your main point? Are parts of your draft
unclear or confusing to them? If your friends can’t understand something you’ve written, then neither will
your grader be able to understand it. Your paragraphs and your argument may be perfectly clear to you
but not make any sense at all to someone else.
Another good way to check your draft is to read it out loud. This will help you tell whether it all makes
sense. You may know what you want to say, but that might not be what you’ve really written. Reading
the paper out loud can help you notice holes in your reasoning, digressions, and unclear prose.
You should count on writing many drafts of your paper. At least 3 or 4!! Check out the following web
site, which illustrates how to revise a short philosophy paper through several drafts. Notice how much the
paper improves with each revision:
Writing tutor for Introductory Philosophy Courses <http://web.williams.edu/wpetc/
philosophy/jcruz/jcruz/writingtutor/>.
Minor Points
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Beginning your paper
Don’t begin with a sentence like “Down through the ages, mankind has pondered the problem of…”
There’s no need to warm up to your topic. You should get right to the point, with the first sentence.
Also, don’t begin with a sentence like “Webster’s Dictionary defines a soul as…” Dictionaries aren’t good
philosophical authorities. They record the way words are used in everyday discourse. Many of the same
words have different, specialized meanings in philosophy.
Grammar
It’s OK to end a sentence with a preposition. It’s also OK to split an infinitive, if you need to.
(Sometimes the easiest way to say what you mean is by splitting an infinitive. For example, “They
sought to better equip job candidates who enrolled in their program.”) Efforts to avoid these often
end up just confusing your prose.
Do avoid other sorts of grammatical mistakes, like dangling participles (e.g., “Hurt by her fall, the
tree fell right on Mary’s leg before she could get out of the way”), and the like.
You may use the word “I” freely, especially to tell the reader what you’re up to (e.g., “I’ve just
explained why… Now I’m going to consider an argument that…”).
Don’t worry about using the verb “is” or “to be” too much. In a philosophy paper, it’s OK to use
this verb as much as you need to.
Secondary readings
For most classes, I will put some articles and books on reserve in Bobst Library for additional reading.
These are optional, and are for your independent study.
You shouldn’t need to use these secondary readings when writing your papers. The point of the papers is
to teach you how to analyze a philosophical argument, and present your own arguments for or against
some conclusion. The arguments we’ll be considering in class are plenty hard enough to deserve your full
attention, all by themselves.
Can you write your paper as a dialogue or story?
No. Done well, these forms of philosophical writing can be very effective. That’s why we read some
dialogues and stories in Philosophy 3. But these forms of philosophical writing are extremely difficult to
do well. They tempt the author to be imprecise and to use unclear metaphors. You need to master
ordinary philosophical writing before you can do a good job with these more difficult forms.
Mechanics
Aim to make your papers less than or equal to the assigned word limit. Longer papers are typically too
ambitious, or repetitious, or full of digressions. Your grade will suffer if your paper has these defects. So
it’s important to ask yourself: What are the most important things you have to say? What can be left out?
But neither should your papers be too short! Don’t cut off an argument abruptly. If a paper topic you’ve
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chosen asks certain questions, be sure you answer or address each of those questions.
Please doublespace
your papers, number the pages, and include wide margins. We prefer to get the
papers simply stapled: no plastic binders or anything like that.
Include your name on the paper. And don’t turn in your only copy! (These things should be obvious, but
apparently they’re not.)
How You’ll Be Graded
You’ll be graded on three basic criteria:
1. How well do you understand the issues you’re writing about?
2. How good are the arguments you offer?
3. Is your writing clear and wellorganized?
We do not judge your paper by whether we agree with its conclusion. In fact, we may not agree
amongst ourselves about what the correct conclusion is. But we will have no trouble agreeing
about whether you do a good job arguing for your conclusion.
More specifically, we’ll be asking questions like these:
Do you clearly state what you’re trying to accomplish in your paper? Is it obvious to the
reader what your main thesis is?
Do you offer supporting arguments for the claims you make? Is it obvious to the reader what
these arguments are?
Is the structure of your paper clear? For instance, is it clear what parts of your paper are
expository, and what parts are your own positive contribution?
Is your prose simple, easy to read, and easy to understand?
Do you illustrate your claims with good examples? Do you explain your central notions? Do
you say exactly what you mean?
Do you present other philosophers’ views accurately and charitably?
The comments I find myself making on students’ philosophy papers most often are these:
“Explain this claim” or “What do you mean by this?” or “I don’t understand what you’re
saying here”
“This passage is unclear (or awkward, or otherwise hard to read)” “Too complicated”
“Too hard to follow” “Simplify”
“Why do you think this?” “This needs more support” “Why should we believe this?”
“Explain why this is a reason to believe P” “Explain why this follows from what you
said before”
“Not really relevant”
“Give an example?”
Try to anticipate these comments and avoid the need for them!
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Your paper should do some philosophical work
A kind of complaint that is common in undergraduate philosophy papers goes like this:
Philosopher X assumes A and argues from there to B. B seems unattractive to
me. Philosopher X just assumes A and doesn’t give any argument for it. I
don’t think A is true. So I can just reject A and thereby avoid B.
This line of thought may very well be correct. And the student may very well be right that
Philosopher X should have given more argument for A. But the student hasn’t really
philosophically engaged with Philosopher X’s view in an interesting way. He hasn’t really done
much philosophical work. It was clear from the outset that Philosopher X was assuming A, and
that if you don’t want to make that assumption, you don’t need to accept X’s conclusion. If this is
all you do in your paper, it won’t be a strong paper and it will get a mediocre grade, even if it’s
wellwritten.
Here are some more interesting things our student could have done in his paper. He could have
argued that B doesn’t really follow from A, after all. Or he could have presented reasons for
thinking that A is false. Or he could have argued that assuming A is an illegitimate move to make
in a debate about whether B is true. Or something else of that sort. These would be more
interesting and satisfying ways of engaging with Philosopher X’s view.
Responding to comments from me or your TA
When you have the opportunity to rewrite a graded paper, keep the following points in mind.
Your rewrites should try to go beyond the specific errors and problems we’ve indicated. If you got
below an A,
then your draft was generally difficult to read, it was difficult to see what your
argument was and what the structure of your paper was supposed to be, and so on. You can only
correct these sorts of failings by rewriting your paper from scratch. (Start with a new, empty
window in your word processor.) Use your draft and the comments you received on it to construct
a new outline, and write from that.
Keep in mind that when I or your TA grade a rewrite, we may sometimes notice weaknesses in
unchanged parts of your paper that we missed the first time around. Or perhaps those weaknesses
will have affected our overall impression of the paper, and we just didn’t offer any specific
recommendation about fixing them. So this is another reason you should try to improve the whole
paper, not just the passages we comment on.
It is possible to improve a paper without improving it enough to raise it to the next grade level.
Sometimes that happens. But I hope you’ll all do better than that.
Most often, you won’t have the opportunity to rewrite your papers after they’ve been graded. So
you need to teach yourself to write a draft, scrutinize the draft, and revise and rewrite your paper
before turning it in to be graded.
Acknowledgements
12/27/2015 Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper
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I don’t want to claim undue credit for this work. A lot of the suggestions here derive from writing
handouts that friends and colleagues lent me. (Alison Simmons and Justin Broackes deserve special
thanks.) Also, I’ve browsed some other writing guidelines on the web, and occasionally incorporated
advice I thought my students would find useful. Peter Horban’s site deserves special mention. Thanks to
Professor Horban for allowing me to incorporate some of his suggestions here.
Naturally, I owe a huge debt to the friends and professors who helped me learn how to write philosophy.
I’m sure they had a hard time of it.
If you’re a teacher and you think your own students would find this web site useful, you are free to point
them here (or to distribute printed copies). It’s all in the public good.
Full licensing details are here.
Created and maintained by jim.pryor@nyu.edu
This work licensed under a Creative Commons License
URL: http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html
Updated: 6Sep12
11:35 AM

A
nalysis
58.1, January 1998, pp. 7–19. © Andy Clark and David Chalmers
The extended mind
Andy Clark
&
David Chalmers
1
1. Introduction
Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? The question
invites two standard replies. Some accept the boundaries of skin and skull,
and say that what is outside the body is outside the mind. Others are
impressed by arguments suggesting that the meaning of our words ‘just
ain’t in the head’, and hold that this externalism about meaning carries
over into an externalism about mind. We propose to pursue a third position.
We advocate a very different sort of externalism: an
active
externalism
, based on the active role of the environment in driving cognitive
processes.
2. Extended cognition
Consider three cases of human problem-solving:
(1) A person sits in front of a computer screen which displays images of
various two-dimensional geometric shapes and is asked to answer questions
concerning the potential fit of such shapes into depicted ‘sockets’. To assess
fit, the person must mentally rotate the shapes to align them with the sockets.
(2) A person sits in front of a similar computer screen, but this time can
choose either to physically rotate the image on the screen, by pressing a
rotate button, or to mentally rotate the image as before. We can also
suppose, not unrealistically, that some speed advantage accrues to the
physical rotation operation.
(3) Sometime in the cyberpunk future, a person sits in front of a similar
computer screen. This agent, however, has the benefit of a neural implant
which can perform the rotation operation as fast as the computer in the
previous example. The agent must still choose which internal resource to use
(the implant or the good old-fashioned mental rotation), as each resource
makes different demands on attention and other concurrent brain activity.
How much
cognition
is present in these cases? We suggest that all three
cases are similar. Case (3) with the neural implant seems clearly to be on a
par with case (1). And case (2) with the rotation button displays the same
sort of computational structure as case (3), distributed across agent and
computer instead of internalized within the agent. If the rotation in case (3)
is cognitive, by what right do we count case (2) as fundamentally different?
We cannot simply point to the skin/skull boundary as justification, since
1
Authors are listed in order of degree of belief in the central thesis
8 andy clark & david chalmers
the legitimacy of that boundary is precisely what is at issue. But nothing
else seems different.
The kind of case just described is by no means as exotic as it may at first
appear. It is not just the presence of advanced external computing
resources which raises the issue, but rather the general tendency of human
reasoners to lean heavily on environmental supports. Thus consider the use
of pen and paper to perform long multiplication (McClelland et al. 1986,
Clark 1989), the use of physical re-arrangements of letter tiles to prompt
word recall in Scrabble (Kirsh 1995), the use of instruments such as the
nautical slide rule (Hutchins 1995), and the general paraphernalia of
language, books, diagrams, and culture. In all these cases the individual
brain performs some operations, while others are delegated to manipulations
of external media. Had our brains been different, this distribution of
tasks would doubtless have varied.
In fact, even the mental rotation cases described in scenarios (1) and (2)
are real. The cases reflect options available to players of the computer
game Tetris. In Tetris, falling geometric shapes must be rapidly directed
into an appropriate slot in an emerging structure. A rotation button can be
used. David Kirsh and Paul Maglio (1994) calculate that the physical rotation
of a shape through 90 degrees takes about 100 milliseconds, plus
about 200 milliseconds to select the button. To achieve the same result by
mental rotation takes about 1000 milliseconds. Kirsh and Maglio go on to
present compelling evidence that physical rotation is used not just to position
a shape ready to fit a slot, but often to help
determine
whether the
shape and the slot are compatible. The latter use constitutes a case of what
Kirsh and Maglio call an ‘epistemic action’.
Epistemic
actions alter the
world so as to aid and augment cognitive processes such as recognition and
search. Merely
pragmatic
actions, by contrast, alter the world because
some physical change is desirable for its own sake (e.g., putting cement
into a hole in a dam).
Epistemic action, we suggest, demands spread of
epistemic credit
. If, as
we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which,
were it done in the head
, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as
part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world
is
(so we claim)
part of the cognitive process. Cognitive processes ain’t (all) in the head!
3. Active externalism
In these cases, the human organism is linked with an external entity in a
two-way interaction, creating a
coupled system
that can be seen as a cognitive
system in its own right. All the components in the system play an active
causal role, and they jointly govern behaviour in the same sort of way that
cognition usually does. If we remove the external component the system’s
the extended mind 9
behavioural competence will drop, just as it would if we removed part of
its brain. Our thesis is that this sort of coupled process counts equally well
as a cognitive process, whether or not it is wholly in the head.
This externalism differs from the standard variety advocated by Putnam
(1975) and Burge (1979). When I believe that water is wet and my twin
believes that twin water is wet, the external features responsible for the
difference in our beliefs are distal and historical, at the other end of a
lengthy causal chain. Features of the
present
are not relevant: if I happen
to be surrounded by XYZ right now (maybe I have teleported to Twin
Earth), my beliefs still concern standard water, because of my history. In
these cases, the relevant external features are
passive
. Because of their
distal nature, they play no role in driving the cognitive process in the hereand-
now. This is reflected by the fact that the actions performed by me and
my twin are physically indistinguishable, despite our external differences.
In the cases we describe, by contrast, the relevant external features are
active
, playing a crucial role in the here-and-now. Because they are coupled
with the human organism, they have a direct impact on the organism and
on its behaviour. In these cases, the relevant parts of the world are
in the
loop
, not dangling at the other end of a long causal chain. Concentrating
on this sort of coupling leads us to an
active externalism
, as opposed to the
passive externalism of Putnam and Burge.
Many have complained that even if Putnam and Burge are right about
the externality of content, it is not clear that these external aspects play a
causal or explanatory role in the generation of action. In counterfactual
cases where internal structure is held constant but these external features
are changed, behaviour looks just the same; so internal structure seems to
be doing the crucial work. We will not adjudicate that issue here, but we
note that active externalism is not threatened by any such problem. The
external features in a coupled system play an ineliminable role – if we
retain internal structure but change the external features, behaviour may
change completely. The external features here are just as causally relevant
as typical internal features of the brain.
2
By embracing an active externalism, we allow a more natural explanation
of all sorts of actions. Once can explain my choice of words in
Scrabble, for example, as the outcome of an extended cognitive process
2
Much of the appeal of externalism in the philosophy of mind may stem from the
intuitive appeal of active externalism. Externalists often make analogies involving
external features in coupled systems, and appeal to the arbitrariness of boundaries
between brain and environment. But these intuitions sit uneasily with the letter of
standard externalism. In most of the Putnam/Burge cases, the immediate environment
is irrelevant; only the historical environment counts. Debate has focused on the
question of whether mind must be in the head, but a more relevant question in assessing
these examples might be: is mind in the present?
10 andy clark & david chalmers
involving the rearrangement of tiles on my tray. Of course, one could always
try to explain my action in terms of internal processes and a long series of
‘inputs’ and ‘actions’, but this explanation would be needlessly complex. If
an isomorphic process were going on in the head, we would feel no urge to
characterize it in this cumbersome way. In a very real sense, the re-arrangement
of tiles on the tray is not part of action; it is part of
thought
.
The view we advocate here is reflected by a growing body of research in
cognitive science. In areas as diverse as the theory of situated cognition
(Suchman 1987), studies of real-world-robotics (Beer 1989), dynamical
approaches to child development (Thelen and Smith 1994), and research
on the cognitive properties of collectives of agents (Hutchins 1995), cognition
is often taken to be continuous with processes in the environment.
3
Thus, in seeing cognition as extended one is not merely making a terminological
decision; it makes a significant difference to the methodology of
scientific investigation. In effect, explanatory methods that might once
have been thought appropriate only for the analysis of ‘inner’ processes are
now being adapted for the study of the outer, and there is promise that our
understanding of cognition will become richer for it.
Some find this sort of externalism unpalatable. One reason may be that
many identify the cognitive with the conscious, and it seems far from plausible
that consciousness extends outside the head in these cases. But not
every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process.
It is widely accepted that all sorts of processes beyond the borders of
consciousness play a crucial role in cognitive processing: in the retrieval of
memories, linguistic processes, and skill acquisition, for example. So the
mere fact that external processes are external where consciousness is internal
is no reason to deny that those processes are cognitive.
More interestingly, one might argue that what keeps real cognition processes
in the head is the requirement that cognitive processes be
portable
.
Here, we are moved by a vision of what might be called the Naked Mind:
a package of resources and operations we can always bring to bear on a
cognitive task, regardless of the local environment. On this view, the trouble
with coupled systems is that they are too easily
decoupled
. The true cognitive
processes are those that lie at the constant core of the system; anything
else is an add-on extra.
There is something to this objection. The brain (or brain and body)
comprises a package of basic, portable, cognitive resources that is of interest
in its own right. These resources may incorporate bodily actions into
cognitive processes, as when we use our fingers as working memory in a
tricky calculation, but they will not encompass the more contingent aspects
3
Philosophical views of a similar spirit can be found in Haugeland 1995, McClamrock
1995, Varela et al. 1991, and Wilson 1994.
the extended mind 11
of our external environment, such as a pocket calculator. Still, mere contingency
of coupling does not rule out cognitive status. In the distant future
we may be able to plug various modules into our brain to help us out: a
module for extra short-term memory when we need it, for example. When
a module is plugged in, the processes involving it are just as cognitive as if
they had been there all along.
Even if one were to make the portability criterion pivotal, active externalism
would not be undermined. Counting on our fingers has already
been let in the door, for example, and it is easy to push things further.
Think of the old image of the engineer with a slide rule hanging from his
belt wherever he goes. What if people always carried a pocket calculator,
or had them implanted? The real moral of the portability intuition is that
for coupled systems to be relevant to the core of cognition,
reliable
coupling is required. It happens that most reliable coupling takes place
within the brain, but there can easily be reliable coupling with the environment
as well. If the resources of my calculator or my Filofax are always
there when I need them, then they are coupled with me as reliably as we
need. In effect, they are part of the basic package of cognitive resources
that I bring to bear on the everyday world. These systems cannot be
impugned simply on the basis of the danger of discrete damage, loss, or
malfunction, or because of any occasional decoupling: the biological brain
is in similar danger, and occasionally loses capacities temporarily in
episodes of sleep, intoxication, and emotion. If the relevant capacities are
generally there when they are required, this is coupling enough.
Moreover, it may be that the biological brain has in fact evolved and
matured in ways which factor in the reliable presence of a manipulable
external environment. It certainly seems that evolution has favoured onboard
capacities which are especially geared to parasitizing the local environment
so as to reduce memory load, and even to transform the nature of
the computational problems themselves. Our visual systems have evolved
to rely on their environment in various ways: they exploit contingent facts
about the structure of natural scenes (e.g. Ullman and Richards 1984), for
example, and they take advantage of the computational short cuts afforded
by bodily motion and locomotion (e.g. Blake and Yuille, 1992). Perhaps
there are other cases where evolution has found it advantageous to exploit
the possibility of the environment being in the cognitive loop. If so, then
external coupling is part of the truly basic package of cognitive resources
that we bring to bear on the world.
Another example may be language, which appears to be a central means
by which cognitive processes are extended into the world. Think of a group
of people brainstorming around a table, or a philosopher who thinks best
by writing, developing her ideas as she goes. It may be that language
12 andy clark & david chalmers
evolved, in part, to enable such extensions of our cognitive resources
within actively coupled systems.
Within the lifetime of an organism, too, individual learning may have
moulded the brain in ways that rely on cognitive extensions that
surrounded us as we learned. Language is again a central example here, as
are the various physical and computational artifacts that are routinely used
as cognitive extensions by children in schools and by trainees in numerous
professions. In such cases the brain develops in a way that complements
the external structures, and learns to play its role within a unified, densely
coupled system. Once we recognize that the crucial role of the environment
in constraining the evolution and development of cognition, we see that
extended cognition is a core cognitive process, not an add-on extra.
4. From cognition to mind
So far we have spoken largely about ‘cognitive processing’, and argued for
its extension into the environment. Some might think that the conclusion
has been bought too cheaply. Perhaps some
processing
takes place in the
environment, but what of
mind
? Everything we have said so far is compatible
with the view that truly mental states – experiences, beliefs, desires,
emotions, and so on – are all determined by states of the brain. Perhaps
what is truly mental is internal, after all?
We propose to take things a step further. While some mental states, such
as experiences, may be determined internally, there are other cases in which
external factors make a significant contribution. In particular, we will
argue that
beliefs
can be constituted partly by features of the environment,
when those features play the right sort of role in driving cognitive processes.
If so, the mind extends into the world.
First, consider a normal case of belief embedded in memory. Inga hears
from a friend that there is an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and
decides to go see it. She thinks for a moment and recalls that the museum
is on 53rd Street, so she walks to 53rd Street and goes into the museum. It
seems clear that Inga believes that the museum is on 53rd Street, and that
she believed this even before she consulted her memory. It was not previously
an
occurrent
belief, but then neither are most of our beliefs. The
belief was somewhere in memory, waiting to be accessed.
Now consider Otto. Otto suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and like
many Alzheimer’s patients, he relies on information in the environment to
help structure his life. Otto carries a notebook around with him everywhere
he goes. When he learns new information, he writes it down. When
he needs some old information, he looks it up. For Otto, his notebook
plays the role usually played by a biological memory. Today, Otto hears
about the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and decides to go see
the extended mind 13
it. He consults the notebook, which says that the museum is on 53rd Street,
so he walks to 53rd Street and goes into the museum.
Clearly, Otto walked to 53rd Street because he wanted to go to the
museum and he believed the museum was on 53rd Street. And just as Inga
had her belief even before she consulted her memory, it seems reasonable
to say that Otto believed the museum was on 53rd Street even before
consulting his notebook. For in relevant respects the cases are entirely analogous:
the notebook plays for Otto the same role that memory plays for
Inga. The information in the notebook functions just like the information
constituting an ordinary non-occurrent belief; it just happens that this
information lies beyond the skin.
The alternative is to say that Otto has no belief about the matter until he
consults his notebook; at best, he believes that the museum is located at the
address in the notebook. But if we follow Otto around for a while, we will
see how unnatural this way of speaking is. Otto is constantly using his
notebook as a matter of course. It is central to his actions in all sorts of
contexts, in the way that an ordinary memory is central in an ordinary life.
The same information might come up again and again, perhaps being
slightly modified on occasion, before retreating into the recesses of his artificial
memory. To say that the beliefs disappear when the notebook is filed
away seems to miss the big picture in just the same way as saying that
Inga’s beliefs disappear as soon as she is longer conscious of them. In both
cases the information is reliably there when needed, available to consciousness
and available to guide action, in just the way that we expect a belief
to be.
Certainly, insofar as beliefs and desires are characterized by their explanatory
roles, Otto’s and Inga’s cases seem to be on a par: the essential causal
dynamics of the two cases mirror each other precisely. We are happy to
explain Inga’s action in terms of her occurrent desire to go to the museum
and her standing belief that the museum is on 53rd street, and we should
be happy to explain Otto’s action in the same way. The alternative is to
explain Otto’s action in terms of his occurrent desire to go to the museum,
his standing belief that the Museum is on the location written in the notebook,
and the accessible fact that the notebook says the Museum is on
53rd Street; but this complicates the explanation unnecessarily. If we must
resort to explaining Otto’s action this way, then we must also do so for the
countless other actions in which his notebook is involved; in each of the
explanations, there will be an extra term involving the notebook. We
submit that to explain things this way is to take
one step too many
. It is
pointlessly complex, in the same way that it would be pointlessly complex
to explain Inga’s actions in terms of beliefs about her memory. The notebook
is a constant for Otto, in the same way that memory is a constant for
14 andy clark & david chalmers
Inga; to point to it in every belief/desire explanation would be redundant.
In an explanation, simplicity is power.
If this is right, we can even construct the case of Twin Otto, who is just
like Otto except that a while ago he mistakenly wrote in his notebook that
the Museum of Modern Art was on 51st Street. Today, Twin Otto is a
physical duplicate of Otto from the skin in, but his notebook differs.
Consequently, Twin Otto is best characterized as believing that the
museum is on 51st Street, where Otto believes it is on 53rd. In these cases,
a belief is simply not in the head.
This mirrors the conclusion of Putnam and Burge, but again there are
important differences. In the Putnam/Burge cases, the external features
constituting differences in belief are distal and historical, so that twins in
these cases produce physically indistinguishable behaviour. In the cases we
are describing, the relevant external features play an active role in the hereand-
now, and have a direct impact on behaviour. Where Otto walks to
53rd Street, Twin Otto walks to 51st. There is no question of explanatory
irrelevance for this sort of external belief content; it is introduced precisely
because of the central explanatory role that it plays. Like the Putnam and
Burge cases, these cases involve differences in reference and truth-conditions,
but they also involve differences in the dynamics of
cognition
.
4
The moral is that when it comes to belief, there is nothing sacred about
skull and skin. What makes some information count as a belief is the role
it plays, and there is no reason why the relevant role can be played only
from inside the body.
Some will resist this conclusion. An opponent might put her foot down
and insist that as she uses the term ‘belief’, or perhaps even according to
standard usage, Otto simply does not qualify as believing that the museum
is on 53rd Street. We do not intend to debate what is standard usage; our
broader point is that the notion of belief
ought
to be used so that Otto
qualifies as having the belief in question. In all
important
respects, Otto’s
case is similar to a standard case of (non-occurrent) belief. The differences
between Otto’s case and Inga’s are striking, but they are superficial. By
using the ‘belief’ notion in a wider way, it picks out something more akin
to a natural kind. The notion becomes deeper and more unified, and is
more useful in explanation.
To provide substantial resistance, an opponent has to show that Otto’s
4
In the terminology of Chalmers (forthcoming): the twins in the Putnam and Burge
cases differ only in their relational content (secondary intension), but Otto and his
twin can be seen to differ in their notional content (primary intension), which is the
sort of content that governs cognition. Notional content is generally internal to a
cognitive system, but in this case the cognitive system is itself effectively extended to
include the notebook.
the extended mind 15
and Inga’s cases differ in some important and relevant respect. But in what
deep respect are the cases different? To make the case
solely
on the grounds
that information is in the head in one case but not in the other would be
to beg the question. If this difference is relevant to a difference in belief, it
is surely not
primitively
relevant. To justify the different treatment, we
must find some more basic underlying difference between the two.
It might be suggested that the cases are relevantly different in that Inga
has more
reliable
access to the information. After all, someone might take
away Otto’s notebook at any time, but Inga’s memory is safer. It is not
implausible that constancy is relevant: indeed, the fact that Otto always
uses his notebook played some role in our justifying its cognitive status. If
Otto were consulting a guidebook as a one-off, we would be much less
likely to ascribe him a standing belief. But in the original case, Otto’s access
to the notebook is very reliable – not perfectly reliable, to be sure, but then
neither is Inga’s access to her memory. A surgeon might tamper with her
brain, or more mundanely, she might have too much to drink. The mere
possibility of such tampering is not enough to deny her the belief.
One might worry that Otto’s access to his notebook
in fact
comes and
goes. He showers without the notebook, for example, and he cannot read
it when it is dark. Surely his belief cannot come and go so easily? We could
get around this problem by redescribing the situation, but in any case an
occasional temporary disconnection does not threaten our claim. After all,
when Inga is asleep, or when she is intoxicated, we do not say that her
belief disappears. What really counts is that the information is easily available
when the subject needs it, and this constraint is satisfied equally in the
two cases. If Otto’s notebook were often unavailable to him at times when
the information in it would be useful, there might be a problem, as the
information would not be able to play the action-guiding role that is
central to belief; but if it is easily available in most relevant situations, the
belief is not endangered.
Perhaps a difference is that Inga has
better
access to the information
than Otto does? Inga’s ‘central’ processes and her memory probably have
a relatively high-bandwidth link between them, compared to the low-grade
connection between Otto and his notebook. But this alone does not make
a difference between believing and not believing. Consider Inga’s museumgoing
friend Lucy, whose biological memory has only a low-grade link to
her central systems, due to nonstandard biology or past misadventures.
Processing in Lucy’s case might be less efficient, but as long as the relevant
information is accessible, Lucy clearly believes that the museum is on 53rd
Street. If the connection was too indirect – if Lucy had to struggle hard to
retrieve the information with mixed results, or a psychotherapist’s aid were
needed – we might become more reluctant to ascribe the belief, but such
16 andy clark & david chalmers
cases are well beyond Otto’s situation, in which the information is easily
accessible.
Another suggestion could be that Otto has access to the relevant information
only by
perception
, whereas Inga has more direct access – by
introspection, perhaps. In some ways, however, to put things this way is to
beg the question. After all, we are in effect advocating a point of view on
which Otto’s internal processes and his notebook constitute a single cognitive
system. From the standpoint of this system, the flow of information
between notebook and brain is not perceptual at all; it does not involve the
impact of something outside the system. It is more akin to information flow
within the brain. The only deep way in which the access is perceptual is that
in Otto’s case, there is a distinctly perceptual phenomenology associated
with the retrieval of the information, whereas in Inga’s case there is not. But
why should the nature of an associated phenomenology make a difference
to the status of a belief? Inga’s memory may have some associated phenomenology,
but it is still a belief. The phenomenology is not visual, to be sure.
But for visual phenomenology consider the Terminator, from the Arnold
Schwarzenegger movie of the same name. When he recalls some information
from memory, it is ‘displayed’ before him in his visual field
(presumably he is conscious of it, as there are frequent shots depicting his
point of view). The fact that standing memories are recalled in this unusual
way surely makes little difference to their status as standing beliefs.
These various small differences between Otto’s and Inga’s cases are all
shallow
differences. To focus on them would be to miss the way in which
for Otto, notebook entries play just the sort of role that beliefs play in guiding
most people’s lives.
Perhaps the intuition that Otto’s is not a true belief comes from a residual
feeling that the only true beliefs are occurrent beliefs. If we take this
feeling seriously, Inga’s belief will be ruled out too, as will many beliefs that
we attribute in everyday life. This would be an extreme view, but it may be
the most consistent way to deny Otto’s belief. Upon even a slightly less
extreme view – the view that a belief must be
available
for consciousness,
for example – Otto’s notebook entry seems to qualify just as well as Inga’s
memory. Once dispositional beliefs are let in the door, it is difficult to resist
the conclusion that Otto’s notebook has all the relevant dispositions.
5. Beyond the outer limits
If the thesis is accepted, how far should we go? All sorts of puzzle cases
spring to mind. What of the amnesic villagers in
One Hundred Years of
Solitude
, who forget the names for everything and so hang labels everywhere?
Does the information in my Filofax count as part of my memory?
If Otto’s notebook has been tampered with, does he believe the newlythe
extended mind 17
installed information? Do I believe the contents of the page in front of me
before I read it? Is my cognitive state somehow spread across the Internet?
We do not think that there are categorical answers to all of these questions,
and we will not give them. But to help understand what is involved
in ascriptions of extended belief, we can at least examine the features of
our central case that make the notion so clearly applicable there. First, the
notebook is a constant in Otto’s life – in cases where the information in the
notebook would be relevant, he will rarely take action without consulting
it. Second, the information in the notebook is directly available without
difficulty. Third, upon retrieving information from the notebook he automatically
endorses it. Fourth, the information in the notebook has been
consciously endorsed at some point in the past, and indeed is there as a
consequence of this endorsement.
5
The status of the fourth feature as a
criterion for belief is arguable (perhaps one can acquire beliefs through
subliminal perception, or through memory tampering?), but the first three
features certainly play a crucial role.
Insofar as increasingly exotic puzzle cases lack these features, the applicability
of the notion of ‘belief’ gradually falls of. If I rarely take relevant
action without consulting my Filofax, for example, its status within my
cognitive system will resemble that of the notebook in Otto’s. But if I often
act without consultation – for example, if I sometimes answer relevant questions
with ‘I don’t know’ – then information in it counts less clearly as part
of my belief system. The Internet is likely to fail on multiple counts, unless I
am unusually computer-reliant, facile with the technology, and trusting,
but information in certain files on my computer may qualify. In intermediate
cases, the question of whether a belief is present may be indeterminate,
or the answer may depend on the varying standards that are at play in various
contexts in which the question might be asked. But any indeterminacy
here does not mean that in the central cases, the answer is not clear.
What about socially extended cognition? Could my mental states be
partly constituted by the states of other thinkers? We see no reason why
not, in principle. In an unusually interdependent couple, it is entirely possible
that one partner’s beliefs will play the same sort of role for the other as
the notebook plays for Otto. What is central is a high degree of trust, reliance,
and accessibility. In other social relationships these criteria may not
be so clearly fulfilled, but they might nevertheless be fulfilled in specific
domains. For example, the waiter at my favourite restaurant might act as
5
The constancy and past-endorsement criteria may suggest that history is partly
constitutive of belief. One might react to this by removing any historical component
(giving a purely dispositional reading of the constancy criterion and eliminating the
past-endorsement criterion, for example), or one might allow such a component as
long as the main burden is carried by features of the present.
18 andy clark & david chalmers
a repository of my beliefs about my favourite meals (this might even be
construed as a case of extended desire). In other cases, one’s beliefs might
be embodied in one’s secretary, one’s accountant, or one’s collaborator.
In each of these cases, the major burden of the coupling between agents
is carried by language. Without language, we might be much more akin to
discrete Cartesian ‘inner’ minds, in which high-level cognition relies largely
on internal resources. But the advent of language has allowed us to spread
this burden into the world. Language, thus construed, is not a mirror of
our inner states but a complement to them. It serves as a tool whose role is
to extend cognition in ways that on-board devices cannot. Indeed, it may
be that the intellectual explosion in recent evolutionary time is due as much
to this linguistically-enabled extension of cognition as to any independent
development in our inner cognitive resources.
What, finally, of the self? Does the extended mind imply an extended
self? It seems so. Most of us already accept that the self outstrips the
boundaries of consciousness; my dispositional beliefs, for example, constitute
in some deep sense part of who I am. If so, then these boundaries may
also fall beyond the skin. The information in Otto’s notebook, for example,
is a central part of his identity as a cognitive agent. What this comes to is that
Otto
himself
is best regarded as an extended system, a coupling of biological
organism and external resources. To consistently resist this conclusion, we
would have to shrink the self into a mere bundle of occurrent states,
severely threatening its deep psychological continuity. Far better to take
the broader view, and see agents themselves as spread into the world.
As with any reconception of ourselves, this view will have significant
consequences. There are obvious consequences for philosophical views of
the mind and for the methodology of research in cognitive science, but
there will also be effects in the moral and social domains. It may be, for
example, that in some cases interfering with someone’s environment will
have the same moral significance as interfering with their person. And if
the view is taken seriously, certain forms of social activity might be reconceived
as less akin to communication and action, and as more akin to
thought. In any case, once the hegemony of skin and skull is usurped, we
may be able to see ourselves more truly as creatures of the world.
Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130, USA
andy@twinearth.wustl.edu
University of California
Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
chalmers@paradox.ucsc.edu
the extended mind 19
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