I am large, i contain multitudes: The personal, the sub-personal, and the extended

Abstract

In Content and Consciousness, Daniel Dennett introduces a distinction between personal and sub-personal levels of explanation. Minding the distinction is key to avoiding false starts and dead ends, Dennett warns, especially when it comes to the areas of thinking and reasoning. Why is the distinction important? To what extent have cognitive scientists and philosophers honored this distinction? This paper will use the current debate over the extended mind hypothesis – roughly, the claim that ‘mental’ or ‘cognitive’ processes extend beyond the boundaries of the brain – to approach both questions. There are several reasons why investigating the extended mind debate is apt: Not only has it garnered the attention of some of our most creative and important researchers in cognitive science, but as will be shown, lurking behind the debate are largely unacknowledged assumptions about how and why the personal/sub-personal distinction should be drawn. To show this, the paper will first look at some key differences in how Dennett and Jerry Fodor interpreted Gilbert Ryle and the way those differences showed up in their respective treatments of the personal/sub-personal distinction. The paper will then consider - and provide a partial defense of - a version of the extended mind hypothesis that honors the personal/sub-personal distinction. Finally, the paper will survey some of the recent literature on the extended mind hypothesis and argue that several of the ways the hypothesis has been discussed display the very confusions that Dennett warns us against.