title: Identifying and individuating cognitive systems: a task-based distributed cognition alternative to agent-based extended cognition.
abstract: This article argues for a task-based approach to identifying and individuating cognitive systems. The agent-based extended cognition approach faces a problem of cognitive bloat and has difficulty accommodating both sub-individual cognitive systems ("scaling down") and some supra-individual cognitive systems ("scaling up"). The standard distributed cognition approach can accommodate a wider variety of supra-individual systems but likewise has difficulties with sub-individual systems and faces the problem of cognitive bloat. We develop a task-based variant of distributed cognition designed to scale up and down smoothly while providing a principled means of avoiding cognitive bloat. The advantages of the task-based approach are illustrated by means of two parallel case studies: re-representation in the human visual system and in a biomedical engineering laboratory.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. jim@jimdavies.org.
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Davies
authors.affiliation: Philosophy Department, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Kourken
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5205-3046
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Michaelian
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D019336:Cognitive Science / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D011591:Psychology, Medical; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000502:physiology
keywords: Cognitive systems; Distributed cognition; Extended cognition; Philosophy of mind; Visual re-representation