Title

Extended cognition, personal responsibility, and relational autonomy

Authors

Authors

M. Cash

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

Phenomenol. Cogn. Sci.

Keywords

Extended cognition; Moral agent; Responsibility; Collective; responsibility; Autonomy; Relational self; MORAL RESPONSIBILITY; MIND; THESIS; BOUNDS; Philosophy

Abstract

The Hypothesis of Extended Cognition (HEC)-that many cognitive processes are carried out by a hybrid coalition of neural, bodily and environmental factors-entails that the intentional states that are reasons for action might best be ascribed to wider entities of which individual persons are only parts. I look at different kinds of extended cognition and agency, exploring their consequences for concerns about the moral agency and personal responsibility of such extended entities. Can extended entities be moral agents and bear responsibility for actions, in addition to or in place of the individuals typically held responsible? What does it mean to be "autonomous" when one's cognition is influenced and supported by a milieu of environmental factors? To answer these questions, I explore strong parallels between HEC's critique of individualism in cognition, and feminist critiques of individualist accounts of self, agency, and autonomy. This relational and social conception of autonomous agency, as scaffolded and supported (or undermined and impaired) by a milieu of social, relational, and normative factors, has important lessons for HEC. Drawing together these two visions of distributed and decentralized aspects of personhood highlights how cognition, action, and responsibility are inextricably linked. It also encourages a reconceptualization of all cognition and all concerns about responsibility for actions, not simply as sometimes "extended" around individuals, but as fundamentally communal, social, and normative, with individual cognition and individual moral responsibility being derivative special cases, not the paradigm examples. Individuals are merely one of many possible loci of cognition, action, and responsibility.

Journal Title

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

Volume

9

Issue/Number

4

Publication Date

1-1-2010

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

645

Last Page

671

WOS Identifier

WOS:000284891300011

ISSN

1568-7759

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