Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 10, 2025

The Spatial Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition
Published on: February 19, 2018
Extended mathematical cognition: external representations with non-derived content
1Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Faculty of Philosophy, Cambridge University, Level One, 16 Mill Lane, Cambridge, UK.
Abstract:
Vehicle externalism maintains that the vehicles of our mental representations can be located outside of the head, that is, they need not be instantiated by neurons located inside the brain of the cogniser. But some disagree, insisting that 'non-derived', or 'original', content is the mark of the cognitive and that only biologically instantiated representational vehicles can have non-derived content, while the contents of all extra-neural representational vehicles are derived and thus lie outside the scope of the cognitive. In this paper we develop one aspect of Menary's vehicle externalist theory of cognitive integration-the process of enculturation-to respond to this longstanding objection. We offer examples of how expert mathematicians introduce new symbols to represent new mathematical possibilities that are not yet understood, and we argue that these new symbols have genuine non-derived content, that is, content that is not dependent on an act of interpretation by a cognitive agent and that does not derive from conventional associations, as many linguistic representations do.
Related Concept Videos
Cognitivism
Previously dominated by behaviorism, which prioritized observable behaviors and largely ignored mental processes, psychology transformed in the 1950s. Cognitive psychologists argue that understanding how we think and process...
Deductive Reasoning
For example, a researcher can deduce specific predictions...
Metacognition
Elaborative Rehearsals
The effectiveness of...
Natural and Artificial Concepts
Castigliano's Theorem: Problem Solving

