It is common nowadays to say one’s memory is ‘on’ one’s smartphone. ‘Distributed cognition’ is an umbrella term for the idea that external objects, like smartphones, are more than mere inputs to our minds. They are, in some sense, part of our minds. It is hard to make this idea more precise. But the good news is that excellent work in philosophy has been done on this. Today, we are in a pretty good position. As one might expect, that position is complex: there are many – sometimes clashing – ways fleshing out the basic idea of distributed cognition.
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