It is not just the presence of advanced external computing resources which raises the issue, but rather the general tendency of human reasoners to lean heavily on environmental supports. Thus consider the use of pen and paper to perform long multiplication, the use of physical re-arrangements of letter tiles to prompt word recall in Scrabble, the use of instruments such as the nautical slide rule, and the general paraphernalia of language, books, diagrams, and culture. In all these cases the individual brain performs some operations, while others are delegated to manipulations of external media. Had our brains been different, this distribution of tasks would doubtless have varied.
If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so we claim) part of the cognitive process. Cognitive processes ain’t (all) in the head!
The human organism is linked with an external entity in a two-way interaction, creating a coupled system that can be seen as a cognitive system in its own right.
One can explain my choice of words in Scrabble, for example, as an outcome of an extended cognitive process involving the rearrangement of tiles on my tray. Of course, one could always try to explain my action in terms of internal processes and a long series of ‘inputs’ and ‘actions,’ but this explanation would be needlessly complex. If an isomorphic process were going on in the head, we would feel no urge to characterize it in this cumbersome way. In a very real sense, the re-arrangement of tiles on the tray is not part of action; it is part of thought.
Another example may be language, which appears to be a central means by which cognitive processes are extended into the world. Think of a group of people brainstorming around a table, or a philosopher who thinks best by writing, developing her ideas as she goes. It may be that language evolved, in part, to enable such extensions of our cognitive resources within actively coupled systems.
Is my cognitive state somehow spread across the Internet?
Could my mental states be partly constituted by the states of other thinkers? We see no reason why not, in principle.
The major burden of the coupling between agents is carried by language. Without language, we might be much more akin to discrete Cartesian ‘inner’ minds, in which high-level cognition relies largely on internal resources. But the advent of language has allowed us to spread this burden into the world. Language, thus construed, is not a mirror of our inner states but a complement to them. It serves as a tool whose role is to extend cognition in ways that on-board devices cannot. Indeed, it may be that the intellectual explosion in recent evolutionary time is due as much to this linguistically-enabled extension of cognition as to any independent development in our inner cognitive resources.
An extended system, a coupling of biological organism and external resources.
Certain forms of social activity might be reconceived as less akin to communication and action, and as more akin to thought.
Debate has focused on the question of whether mind must be in the head, but a more relevant question in assessing these examples might be: is mind in the present?