The Coupling-Constitution Fallacy

In the face of both common sense and contemporary science, an increasing number of philosophers and psychologists have found themselves attracted to the view that, in ordinary tool use, we have instances in which cognitive processes span the cranial boundary and extend into extracranial space. As Daniel Dennett puts it, " minds are composed of tools for thinking that we not only obtain from the wider (social) world, but largely leave in the world, instead of cluttering up our brains with them " (Dennett, 2000, p. 21, italics in original). According to this kind of environmentalized cognition, when a student takes notes in class, the student literally commits information to memory. When someone uses pencil and paper to compute large sums, cognitive processes extend into the pencil and paper themselves. Fans of environmentalized cognition differ among themselves about just what types of tool use bring about the extension of the cognitive into the extracranial world. So, where some may wish to maintain that all brain-tool couplings will let the cognitive enter the artifactual, others restrict the view to only certain species of brain-tool couplings. 1 Be these refinements as they may, all fans of environmentalized cognition have enthusiastically embraced what they recognize to be a radical departure from