Andrew Brook, professeur de philosophie et sciences cognitives, et directeur de l’Institut des sciences cognitives de Carleton University, le 28 septembre 2007.

The idea that something about cognition lies outside the brain and even the skin is central to a number of significant recent developments in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Loosely grouped under the label, ‘situated cognition’, all variants of this view hold that the various contexts of cognition are crucial to it in some way. However, there is a big division over what way. Indeed, there are a number of divisions over what way but the one on which I will focus is whether contexts are just causally linked to cognition or are actually part of cognition, some contexts at any rate. However crucial researchers of the former persuasion take context to be, they do not mess around with the traditional boundary between mind and world. Researchers of the second persuasion do challenge that boundary. They hold that in some respects the mind actually extends beyond the brain and skin, that something outside the body constitutes part of the mind.