Essay
Essay A222 - TMA05
- Module
- A222
- Institution
- The Open University (OU)
Are Otto’s notebook entries functionally equivalent to Inga’s beliefs?, What implications does your answer have for the extended mind thesis?
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Enrique Sarabia Sánchez - personal identifier: G6533073TMA 05 - Word limit: 1500/2000 words
Are Otto’s notebook entries functionally equivalent to Inga’s beliefs?, What implications does
your answer have for the extended mind thesis?
I will begin this essay with an example of Clark and Chalmers' thinking.
Let us first analyse the assumption of Inga, who intends to go to the MoMA in New York. To
do so, Inga struggles to remember the address of the museum and relies on her belief, this belief
is stored in a part of her brain memory and tells her that the museum is located on 53rd street.
Unlike her, Otto suffers from Alzheimer's, so he always has a notebook in which he writes
down all the information he can forget. Before leaving, Otto tries to remember the address of
the Moma, but when he is unable to do so, he looks it up in his notebook, where he had written
down that it was on 53rd Street.
In both cases, the aforementioned longing (to visit the museum) and the identical belief (the
Moma museum is on 53rd Street) are observed, although how they achieve this belief is
different. Inga is quite capable of remembering her belief without recourse to any other element
or object from the outside world. Otto, unlike Inga, manages to remember his belief by simply
consulting his notebook.
From the functionalist approach, according to Clark and Chalmers, this difference seems
inconsequential: in Inga's case, her action is justified by her desire to know the MoMA and by
her belief that it is located on 53rd Street. The two mental processes fulfil a specific causal
factor, which is the same as in Otto's example: that of explaining why at this precise moment, in
New York, two subjects go to a museum in a way that is comprehensible to us. Memory plays
here only an instrumental role: that of facilitating the passage to a mental state (belief), which is
the one that provides the information necessary to fulfil the original purpose.
However, if, as Clark and Chalmers state, "the essential causal dynamics in both cases are a
reflection of each other” (Clark & Chalmers 1998), it is clear that we will have to affirm that the
neural processes in Inga's example with the notebook and in Otto's case belong to their
respective realities. Naturally, it is feasible to question the latter assertion. It is one thing to say,
which is hardly questionable, that the notebook have a relevant role in the understanding of
Otto's behaviour, but it is another thing to say that the notebook is, in these circumstances, part
of Otto's mind.
This is one of the main objections to the extended mind theory. In this sense, the notebook has a
causal but not a constitutive function in Otto's mental reality. The drawback of this reasoning is
that, if one is a functionalist, it is not easy to draw the line between what plays a constitutive
role and what has a purely causal function. More specifically, it is not easy to make the
distinction so that Inga's brain is part of the realm of the constitutive and Otto's notebook is
relegated to the realm of causation.
It must be remembered that, according to functionalism, mental states are determined according
to the function they play in the behaviour of a given organism and its regulation.
If it is true, as Clark and Chalmers argue, that there is no important difference between Inga's
mind and Otto's notebook in terms of their equivalent functioning, then one cannot be said to
have a constitutive role (i.e., to be considered a piece of memory) while the other has only a
causal function (transmitting information) that will ultimately be processed by the brain itself.
This reasoning is driven by a reasonable concern: if we end up affirming that everything that
plays a role in the causal exposition of my mental life belongs to my mind, won't we be forced
to affirm that the Universe itself or my parents are also part of my mind? After all, without
them, neither I nor my mind could exist. Both play an indispensable causal role. So, if this is the
conclusion we have reached, the extended mind theory is something that makes no sense.
Something like the constitution/causation distinction is therefore inevitable.
It seems to me that this argument is correct, but it is not clear to me that it is reliable enough to
disprove the extended mind theory.
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