ABSTRACT
We are increasingly reliant on technology. Is this undermining our cognitive capacities? One key issue in this respect is whether there is such a thing as extended cognition. Extended cognition is when a cognitive process extends beyond the skin and skull of the subject to involve ‘external’ factors, like technology. The claim is not that every use of technology is extended cognition, but only when we are using technology in ways that is in every relevant respect analogous to how we employ our non-extended cognitive resources. Some of the seamless ways in which we might integrate technology into our everyday lives would plausibly count as genuine instances of extended cognition. If there can be genuine cases of extended cognition, then there can be instances of extended knowledge, where one’s knowledge is the result of an extended cognitive process. If extended cognition and extended knowledge are bona fide phenomena, then our contemporary reliance on technology might well be best thought of as a kind of augmentation of our biological cognitive capacities. In that case, it is not that this reliance on technology is degrading our cognitive capacities, but rather that it is enhancing them. We consider the distinction between mere cognitive abilities and faculties and the very specialised kind of cognitive abilities involved in the intellectual virtues. The distinctive properties of the intellectual virtues mean that it was hard to see how they could be subject to extended cognition in the way that one’s ordinarily cognitive abilities can be. This point might be important, in that developing one’s intellectual virtues might be something that a wise person would do regardless of the availability of epistemically useful technology.
