Personal assault, property damage, and the hypothesis of extended cognition

The extended cognition hypothesis – the idea that cognition can, under certain conditions, extend beyond the brain and body – can offer an advantage: it could align better with ethical and legal judgments concerning external artifacts. I investigate this by focusing on Adam Carter and Orestis Palermos’s idea that intentionally damaging external artifacts appropriately integrated into one’s cognition constitutes personal assault (“extended personal assault”). First, I examine their preferred account of extended cognition, and argue that it is vulnerable to the cognitive bloat objection in a previously overlooked way and conflicts with the common assumption that some cognitive processes are wholly internal and neural. Because my objections do not reject the extended cognition hypothesis altogether, I evaluate the notion of extended personal assault. I argue that, ethically, it is either merely a terminological consequence of the extended cognition hypothesis, or it is based on the mistaken idea that the ethical right against personal assault provides stronger protection than that ensured by the ethical right against property damage. Then, I argue that the extended mind framework cannot reliably ground legal protections. I conclude that this hypothesis does not offer an advantage over non-extended views regarding ethical and legal judgments concerning personal assault.