Is Distributed Cognition Group level Cognition?

Journal of Social Ontology 1 (2):189-224 (2015)
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Abstract

This paper shows that recent arguments from group problem solving and task performance to emergent group level cognition that rest on the social parity and related principles are invalid or question begging. The paper shows that standard attributions of problem solving or task performance to groups require only multiple agents of the outcome, not a group agent over and above its members, whether or not any individual member of the group could have accomplished the task independently.

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Author's Profile

Kirk Ludwig
Indiana University, Bloomington

Citations of this work

On (not) defining cognition.Colin Allen - 2017 - Synthese 194 (11):4233-4249.
The Dynamics of Group Cognition.S. Orestis Palermos - 2016 - Minds and Machines 26 (4):409-440.
Do corporations have minds of their own?Kirk Ludwig - 2017 - Philosophical Psychology 30 (3):265-297.
The real epistemic significance of perceptual learning.Berit Brogaard & Dimitria Gatzia - 2018 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (5-6):543-558.

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References found in this work

Group agency: the possibility, design, and status of corporate agents.Christian List & Philip Pettit - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Philip Pettit.
The Bounds of Cognition.Frederick Adams & Kenneth Aizawa - 2008 - Malden, MA, USA: Wiley-Blackwell. Edited by Kenneth Aizawa.
Cognition in the Wild.Edwin Hutchins - 1998 - Mind 107 (426):486-492.

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