Extended Mind as a Different Way to Realize Cognition

The main claim of the famous paper “The Extended Mind”, written by Clark and Chalmers (CC), is that the mind could literally extend into the external world. Among the many opponents of this claim, Robert Rupert has raised two main objections against it. The first, depending on the acceptance or denial of the possible 4th feature the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC) is either insignificant or implausible and the second, external cognitive states are so immensely different from internal ones that they should be counted as distinct. In this paper, I will not only answer Rupert’s criticisms through system-respond and differences in R-properties, but I will, in the end, also respond to the criticisms on extended mind, which are based on the observation that it is not as groundbreaking as it first appeared to be, and claim that even if that is the case, it doesn’t posit a problem to its significance.