How do embodied and extended minds internalize content?

James Grayot (Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto)

 Informed Philosophy of Mind Online Seminar


Who: James Grayot, Instituto de Filosofia, Universidade do Porto
When: Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025 — 5:00–6:30 pm (CET)
Where: Online via Zoom:
https://pantheonsorbonne.zoom.us/j/92782580594?pwd=a5p3WfunQQxJICrjJaUenFJFzmllbx.1
What: How do embodied and extended minds internalize content?


This paper addresses the problem of how embodied and extended minds internalize external representations and the implications for human cognition. Standard accounts, such as the thesis of neural reuse, hold that cortical networks are repurposed to manage novel representational content. While this view has garnered wide support, it inherits difficulties from traditional representational theories of cognition and leaves unresolved the question of whether neural systems represent at all. Moderate theories of extended and embodied cognition, such as Clark’s extended functionalism and Menary’s cognitive integration, better capture the transformative role of external symbols and practices but each raise ontological challenges concerning the relation between internal and external representational processes. To move forward, I evaluate two alternatives: (1) framing internalization in terms of symbolic affordances, which deny the need for internal representations but risk neglecting key (internal) features of cognitive transformation, and (2) construing internalization through inner speech, which supports cognitive transformation but risks separating representational content from the vehicles upon which complex cognitive achievements depend. I argue for a synthesis of these approaches, offering a dynamic, process-based conception of representation that transcends traditional representationalist models, but differs from radical, anti-representationalist accounts by allowing for the possibility of truly internalized content.
 
For any questions, please contact:

Sacha Behrend — [email protected]
Elodie Boissard — [email protected]


Program

• 17 Sept 2025: Géraldine Carranante — Can we list what we can see?
• 1 Oct 2025: Jérôme Dokic — Two levels of confusion between Imagination and Memory
• 12 Nov 2025: Margherita Arcangeli — Episodic Memory through the lens of Aphantasia
• 3 Dec 2025: James Grayot — How do embodied and extended minds internalize contents?
• 13 Jan 2026: Raphaël Künstler — TBA
• 4 Feb 2026: Constant Bonard — Can a Belief–Desire Theory Explain All Affective States?
• 11 March 2026: Lucie Berkovitch — TBA

Organizers:

Sacha Behrend — Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Hradec Králové (Czech Republic) / Affiliated Researcher, Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques (IHPST), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne


Elodie Boissard — Postdoctoral Researcher, Bordeaux Neurocampus Department / Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives et Intégratives d’Aquitaine (UMR 5287), Université de Bordeaux, CNRS