Is The Mind Really Extended?

In1998, Analysis published an influential paper,’The Extended Mind’, in which Andy Clark and David Chalmers present an intriguing view about the nature of mind called the’Extended Mind Hypothesis’(’EMH’ hereafter). According to EMH, the mind is not confined within the boundary of skin and skull, because components of mind, mental states like beliefs, can be constituted by features of the environment under certain circumstances. EMH has posed a serious challenge to our traditional notion of the mind and excited a long-lasting debate over the past ten-plus years.In this paper, I present an argument against EMH. In the first chapter, I will introduce two theoretical precursors of EMH: externalism about mental content and functionalism. The aim of the second chapter is to delineate the argument for EMH and the main debates among it. I then critically evaluate EMH in the chapter three. In particular, I begin with a thought-experiment designed to show the anti-intuitive consequence of EMH. In addition, I argue that the theoretical foundation of EMH is a misleading notion about mental states. Finally, I shall show that the so-called extended belief fails to satisfy crucial criteria for mental states. Therefore, EMH fails.