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Externalism about the contents of psychological states does not imply that such states or processes themselves extend outside the subject’s central nervous system or body in any substantial sense. Even if believing that Paris is beautiful requires the subject to relate in some way to Paris, the belief is still in his head, just as sunburn is a condition of the skin even if, by definition, it must have been caused by the sun (Davidson 1987).
Some, however, have argued that cognitive processes do sometimes extend beyond the body. Consider, for example, an airline pilot using a flight computer and other instruments to fly a plane (Hutchins 1995) or a subject with Alzheimer’s disease who needs a notebook to find her way around (Clark and Chalmers 1998). In each case, it might be thought that the cognitive system involved extends beyond the humans’ bodies to include these external items. If that is right, it may still be the case that the contents of all the representations involved are narrow with respect to this extended cognitive system, and do not essentially require relations to things beyond its boundaries.
The theses of content externalism and extended cognition are distinct, and neither one implies the other.