Andy Clark (2008), Oxford University Press, 286 pp. by NDPR’s count — DOI-10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195333213.001.0001
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-02 at the owner’s request, with Chalmers’s
extended-mind programme. Unavailable because the full text is not lawfully
readable online, and so no NOTE is filed. What is reachable, to scope it
until somebody reads it:
- The publisher’s description. The book surveys work on “embodied, situated, distributed, and even ‘extended’ cognition”, asks “exactly what kind of link is at issue” between thought and body, action and environment, and argues for an approach that “combines the use of representational, computational, and information-theoretic tools with an appreciation of the importance of context, timing, biomechanics, and dynamics”. “More controversially, it depicts some coalitions of biological and non-biological resources as the extended cognitive circuitry of individual minds.”
- Contents (Crossref, with pages). Foreword by David Chalmers (ix–xvi); Introduction: BRAINBOUND Versus EXTENDED (xxv–xxx); Part I, “From Embodiment to Cognitive Extension”: 1 The Active Body (3–29), 2 The Negotiable Body (30–43), 3 Material Symbols (44–60), 4 World, Incorporated (61–82); Part II, “Boundary Disputes”: 5 Mind Re-bound? (85–110), 6 The Cure for Cognitive Hiccups (HEMC, HEC, HEMC…) (111–139), 7 Rediscovering the Brain (140–166); Part III, “The Limits of Embodiment”: 8 Painting, Planning, and Perceiving (169–195), 9 Disentangling Embodiment (196–217); 10 Conclusions: Mind as Mashup (218–219); Appendix: The Extended Mind (220–232). The part titles are from the NDPR review, which does not list chapters; the grouping of chapters into parts is inferred from the page gaps after chapters 4 and 7.
- What it answers. Part II is the reply to the critics this record now holds: chapter 6’s title uses Rupert’s labels for the embedded (HEMC) and extended (HEC) hypotheses (LIT-422), and Chalmers’s foreword says he agrees “with almost everything in Andy’s authoritative treatment of these objections in part two”. Adams and Aizawa’s critique (LIT-438) is the other target, and Clark’s earlier reply to it is held as LIT-403.
- What it contains that is already here. The appendix reprints LIT-097. The foreword is LIT-421, read in full.
- Chapter 8 and consciousness. The foreword says Clark there allows only “a weaker sort of dependence of consciousness on the environment”. Clark’s fuller case that “the machinery of consciousness is (probably) still in the head” is a 2009 Mind paper, not held here.
A deeper reading should check whether Part II answers Rupert’s dilemma on the past-endorsement criterion and his generation-effect and interference arguments directly, or only Adams and Aizawa. It should also check whether chapter 8’s “weaker dependence” bears on the group-consciousness question of THEORY-043. It carries no instruction for machine-learning practice so far as the description shows.