The extension of the extended mind 127
enjoy somewhat more substantial empirical support in terms of paleontological
evidence than the language-brain co-evolution hypothesis: early human tools
have been preserved and can be classified into stages of development that accord
with stages of human evolution, and closer comparisons are possible between
tool use in humans and other species than between human language and animal
signals. Such empirical support, patchy and contestable as it may be, helps to keep
co-evolutionary theories of tool use at a comfortable distance from anthropological speculations in philosophy such as the concept of “homo faber”, as criticised
by Max Scheler (1928) or the diagnosis in Arnold Gehlen (1940) of man as an
“incomplete being”.
These observations about language and tools as constitutive S elements of human
cognition, however, do not imply an either/or decision between them: the most
plausible suggestion is that both tool use and language co-evolved with the establishment of modes of cultural transmission and complex social behaviours in such
a way that only the combination of all these elements, rather than merely one or a
few of them, sufficiently explains the complexity and function of human cognitive
traits. It might also be that not only cognitive artefacts contributed to the evolution
of these traits.
The constitutiveness S of tool and language use in general to human cognitive
capacities has to be distinguished from the creation and use of any concrete artefact as being constitutive W to the accomplishment of some function for its user.
Only under the former but not the latter perspective, one can say that the function
in question is established by the use of artefacts as one of its necessary preconditions, and only under the former but not the latter perspective, one can say that it
is also sufficient for the anchoring of that function as a biological one. The use of
any concrete artefact may ultimately make a contribution to the make-up of some
cognitive trait, and, if the historical accounts referred to here are substantially
right, the use of concrete objects has been part of establishing the cognitive traits
that we now call our own, but when considered individually, the use of a concrete
artefact will not provide sufficient grounds for an explanation of why our cognitive traits are what they are, and what functions they serve.
If the human faculty of language and linguistic structures in conjunction are
correctly described as achieving a complex cognitive coupling between agents
and their environments that would not be possible without them, and hence be
constitutive S to it, they may actually and, at the same instance, be the cognitive
resource with the highest potential for decoupling, as they allow for public and
individual use in a multitude of partly unanticipated contexts, and as they allow
for degrees of abstraction and detachment from actual matters of fact that would
otherwise be hard to come by. Hence, contrary to one concluding observation in
Clark and Chalmers’s essay, the human mind, without language, would not be
“much more akin to discrete Cartesian ‘inner’ minds, in which high level cognition relies largely on internal resources” (1998, 18). If we may call our evolutionary kin as witness, our minds would be coupled with their environments in
considerably tighter and more direct fashion, in that there would be little exception to being directly guided in our actions by what we encounter there.
enjoy somewhat more substantial empirical support in terms of paleontological
evidence than the language-brain co-evolution hypothesis: early human tools
have been preserved and can be classified into stages of development that accord
with stages of human evolution, and closer comparisons are possible between
tool use in humans and other species than between human language and animal
signals. Such empirical support, patchy and contestable as it may be, helps to keep
co-evolutionary theories of tool use at a comfortable distance from anthropological speculations in philosophy such as the concept of “homo faber”, as criticised
by Max Scheler (1928) or the diagnosis in Arnold Gehlen (1940) of man as an
“incomplete being”.
These observations about language and tools as constitutive S elements of human
cognition, however, do not imply an either/or decision between them: the most
plausible suggestion is that both tool use and language co-evolved with the establishment of modes of cultural transmission and complex social behaviours in such
a way that only the combination of all these elements, rather than merely one or a
few of them, sufficiently explains the complexity and function of human cognitive
traits. It might also be that not only cognitive artefacts contributed to the evolution
of these traits.
The constitutiveness S of tool and language use in general to human cognitive
capacities has to be distinguished from the creation and use of any concrete artefact as being constitutive W to the accomplishment of some function for its user.
Only under the former but not the latter perspective, one can say that the function
in question is established by the use of artefacts as one of its necessary preconditions, and only under the former but not the latter perspective, one can say that it
is also sufficient for the anchoring of that function as a biological one. The use of
any concrete artefact may ultimately make a contribution to the make-up of some
cognitive trait, and, if the historical accounts referred to here are substantially
right, the use of concrete objects has been part of establishing the cognitive traits
that we now call our own, but when considered individually, the use of a concrete
artefact will not provide sufficient grounds for an explanation of why our cognitive traits are what they are, and what functions they serve.
If the human faculty of language and linguistic structures in conjunction are
correctly described as achieving a complex cognitive coupling between agents
and their environments that would not be possible without them, and hence be
constitutive S to it, they may actually and, at the same instance, be the cognitive
resource with the highest potential for decoupling, as they allow for public and
individual use in a multitude of partly unanticipated contexts, and as they allow
for degrees of abstraction and detachment from actual matters of fact that would
otherwise be hard to come by. Hence, contrary to one concluding observation in
Clark and Chalmers’s essay, the human mind, without language, would not be
“much more akin to discrete Cartesian ‘inner’ minds, in which high level cognition relies largely on internal resources” (1998, 18). If we may call our evolutionary kin as witness, our minds would be coupled with their environments in
considerably tighter and more direct fashion, in that there would be little exception to being directly guided in our actions by what we encounter there.