Extended Knowledge and Causal Dependence

Abstract

One of the principal presuppositions in the extended mind account of Clark and Chalmers establishes that extended and non-extended cognitive systems have somehow the same structure and that the distinctions between them can only be superficial. In contrast, this work presents some arguments for the idea that it is possible to find fundamental differences between both, mainly on the basis that a criterion that does not include the notion of knowledge is not strong enough to define cognitive processes (section 2). A brief analysis on the non-transitivity of trust (section 1) and the notion of causal dependence between information and cognitive systems (section 5) might be helpful to support this position. It will be argued (section 4) that the counterfactual block which supports the extended mind building does not seem to be firm.