David Murphy (Truman State University)
Proponents of the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC) regularly invoke its explanatory contributions, while critics assign negative explanatory value. Mark Sprevak’s critique, inspired by Peter Lipton, casts doubt on the efficacy of the shared strategy of invoking explanation as justification. Specifically, an inference to the best explanation (IBE) concerning HEC is said to fail because there’s a close rival that makes a competing truth claim, namely the hypothesis of embedded cognition (HEMC), but HEMC cannot be differentiated meaningfully from HEC in relation to explanatory virtues.
I argue that even though there’s merit to the critique when we accept its framing, the ascription of a narrow model of IBE to the discussants leads to a faulty generalization concerning available explanatory resources, and removes promising explanationist strategies from view. When we, by contrast, set explanatory tools sympathetically – actualizing a directive set by Sprevak for his critique -- the viability of arguments based on explanatory contributions returns to view.
Lipton and Sprevak’s critique notwithstanding, commitment to “the core explanationist idea that explanatory considerations are a guide to inference” (Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, 153) comports well with endorsing explanatorily based arguments for and against HEC and HEMC. Strikingly, appropriating and developing resources presented by Lipton facilitates the deflection of much of Lipton and Sprevak’s critique.
Placing broadening moves under the umbrella of pluralist explanationism (an explanationism assisted by Lipton’s “compatibilist” variant), I demonstrate how this resets the debate, concluding that the explanationist need not agree to the stalemate regarding explanatory virtues that the critique posits. First, in agreement with Lipton, I feature background beliefs and interest relativity. Sprevak draws from Lipton to set IBE as inferring to the hypothesis that best explains scientific data, but that standard model narrows when he ignores background beliefs and interest relativity. That narrowing illicitly enables key critical moves. Secondly, bringing contrastive explanation (CE) to bear (featured by Lipton in relation to IBE) not only illuminates an argument made by proponents of HEC that Sprevak resists, but draws in the “explanatory pluralism” Lipton connects to CE. Thirdly, much of strength of the critique depends on ascribing a model of IBE anchored in realism. When we, instead, explore perspectives arising from anti-realist variants of IBE, again using Lipton as prompt, that strength diminishes. Fourthly, I contend that an argument against extending HEC to consciousness stands when seen as a “potential” explanation (Lipton), akin to Peircean abduction, even though it fails when interpreted as an attempted IBE, narrowly conceived. Fifthly, developing a connection between explanationism and voluntarism adumbrated by Lipton, creates additional space for explanatory appeals that fail within the unnecessarily tight constraints ascribed by the critic.
Discussants of HEC and HEMC need not accept the ascription of a narrow model of explanationism to themselves. Within a pluralist explanationist framework, we see that explanatory considerations provide significant backing for key positions regarding the extended mind, including retaining HEC as a live option, favoring HEC and HEMC in different contexts, and resisting extending the extended mind hypothesis to consciousness.
