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Externalism is a group of positions in the philosophy of mind which hold that the mind is not only the result of what is going on inside the nervous system (or the brain) but also of what either occurs or exists outside the subject. It is often contrasted with internalism which holds that the mind emerges from neural activity alone. Externalism articulates the belief that the mind is not just the brain or what the brain does. There are different versions of externalism based both on the strength of the relation, and on what the mind is taken to be.〔Rowlands, M., (2003), Externalism. Putting Mind and World Back Together Again, Chesham, Acumen Publishing Limited.〕 Externalism stresses the importance of factors external to the nervous system. At one extreme, the mind could possibly depend on external factors. At the opposite extreme, the mind depends necessarily on external factors. The most extreme form of externalism maintains that the mind is either constituted by or identical with physical processes partially or totally external to the nervous system. Another important criterion is which aspect of the mind is addressed. Some externalists focus on purely cognitive aspects of the mindsuch as Andy Clark and David Chalmers,〔Clark, A. and D. Chalmers, (1999), "The Extended Mind." in Analysis, 58(1): 10-23.〕 Shaun Gallagher〔Gallagher, S., (2009), "Philosophical Antecedents of Situated Cognition" in P. Robbins and M. Aydede, Eds, The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.〕 and many others〔Robbins, P. and M. Aydede, Eds, (2009), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.〕while some tackle either the phenomenal aspect of the mind or the conscious mind itself. A few consider only the phenomenal content, such as William Lycan,〔Lycan, W. G., (2001), "The Case for Phenomenal Externalism" in J. E. Tomberlin, Ed., Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 15: Metaphysics, Atascadero, Ridgeview Publishing: 17-36.〕 Alex Byrne〔Byrne, A. and M. Tye, (2006), "Qualia ain't in the Head." in Noûs, 40(2): 241-255.〕 or Francois Tonneau;〔Tonneau, F., (2004), "Consciousness Outside the Head." in Behavior and Philosophy, 32: 97-123.〕 while others also argue the role of the mind as a vehicle of mental phenomenal activity, such as Teed Rockwell〔Rockwell, T., (2005), ''Neither Brain nor Ghost'', Cambridge (Mass), MIT Press.〕 or Riccardo Manzotti.〔Manzotti, R., (2006), "An alternative process view of conscious perception." in Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13(6): 45-79.〕 One last important differentiating factor is whether what is external to the mind is the content or the vehicle of the mind. A neurobiological theory that relies on externalism for explanation of mental phenomena is called practopoiesis. == Proto-externalists == To this group belong many authors who weren’t dubbed as externalist but whose work suggested views not too far from current forms of externalism. The first group of protexternalists to consider is the group of neorealists active at the beginning of 1900.〔Holt, E. B., W. T. Marvin, et al., (1910), "The program and first platform of six realists." in The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 7: 393-401.〕 In particular, Edwin Holt suggested a view of perception that considered the external world as constitutive of mental content. His rejection of representation paved the way to consider the external object as being somehow directly perceived: “Nothing can represent a thing but that thing itself”.〔Holt, E. B. (1914). The concept of consciousness. New York: Macmillan. p. 142〕 Holt’s words anticipated by almost a century the famous anti-representationalist slogan by Rodney Brooks: "The world is its best representation".〔Brooks, R. A., (1991), "Intelligence Without Representations." in Artificial Intelligence Journal, 47: 139-159.〕 Recently, neorealist views were refreshed by Francois Tonneau, who wrote that “According to neorealism, consciousness is merely a part, or cross-section, of the environment. Neorealism implies that all conscious experiences, veridical or otherwise” (Tonneau 2004, p. 97)〔 Another author to be taken into account is Alfred North Whitehead, whose process ontology is a form of externalism since it endorses a neutral ontology, whose basic elements (prehension, actual occasions, events, and processes) seamlessly proceeded from microscopic activity up to the highest level of psychological and emotional life. Although the main Whitehead text is rather difficult,〔Whitehead, A. N., (1929/1978), Process and Reality, London, Free Press.〕 David Ray Griffin recently wrote an interesting update on Whitehead's thought.〔Griffin, D. R., (2007), Whitehead's Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy: An Argument for its Contemporary Relevance, Albany (NY), State University of New York Press.〕 John Dewey also expressed a conception of the mind and its role in the world which is very sympathetic with externalism (Dewey 1925). More recently, James J. Gibson defended an ecological view of perception and thus of many aspects of the mind.〔Gibson, J. J., (1979), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston, Houghton Mifflin.〕 He re-formulated several notions of various cognitive processes which are customarily internal to the brain. Two clear examples are optical flow and information. For Gibson the optical flow is not the computation of the spatial derivatives of the images acquired by the retina as in the classic computational view of the mind championed by David Marr〔Marr, D., (1982), Vision, S.Francisco, Freeman.〕 and many others,〔Churchland, P. S. and T. J. Sejnowski, (1992), The Computational Brain, Cambridge (Mass), MIT Press.〕 rather the optical flow is an environmental dynamic manifold into which the agent is moving. In Gibson's system, information gets a twist, too, and it is relocated at an ecological level. Gibson introduced the notion of affordance which is external to the agent as such being the potential causal engagement between the body of the agent and some other object. Gregory Bateson also outlined an ecological view of the mind.〔Bateson, G., (1972/2000), Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.〕 Because of his background in cybernetics, he was familiar with the notion of feedback that somehow hampers the traditional separation between the inside and the outside of a system. He questioned the traditional boundary of the mind and tried to express an ecological view of it, attempting to show that the chasm between mind and nature is much less obvious than it seems.〔Bateson, G., (1979/2002), Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Cresskill (NJ), Hampton Press.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Externalism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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