New paper by Adam Carter and Duncan Pritchard to a appear in Graham and Pedersen’s volume on Epistemic Entitlement:

Extended Entitlement

Abstract: The hypothesis of extended cognition, according to which cognitive processes are not bound by skin and skull but can extend into the world, is gaining traction in the philosophy of mind; but it remains to be seen whether mainstream epistemology can make room for ‘extended’ cognitive processes. One constraining issue is that from an epistemological point of view epistemic evaluations should be symmetrical across pairs of cases where relevant epistemic and psychological factors are held fixed and all that is varied is whether the process is extended. We show, however, that in the classic ‘extended memory’ case used to motivate extended cognition, such epistemic symmetry will be prima facie troublesome to square with the observation that biological memory is a paradigmatically basic epistemic source, whereas extended memory appears to be a non-basic epistemic source. We argue that with a proper conception of cognitive integration in hand this problem can be resolved. In particular, we claim that extended memory cases, properly understood, involve a kind of ‘extended entitlement’, where the entitlement in question is of the same kind as that enjoyed by our non-extended memorial beliefs.

For the full paper click here.