Aesthetic value, artistic value, and the socially extended mind

Recent, more liberal approaches to the extended mind have proposed that cognition can extend socially, in particular by way of cognitive institutions. Cognitive institutions are pools of resources, generated through agents interacting, to which other agents ‘offload’ part of their cognitive work, enabling new, specialised forms of problem-solving, judging, deciding, and acting. These specialised forms of cognition are constitutively enabled by these institutions such that, if one took away the institution, one would take away the ability to perform that cognitive process. Here, I show that this understanding of cognition’s extension can be used to defend Robert Stecker’s position within the aesthetic-artistic value debate by shifting focus onto the cognitive processes that lead to aesthetic and artistic value judgements rather than the values themselves. According to the defence I offer, the distinction between aesthetic and artistic value judgements is one of the degree of extendedness of the judging process, where agents are extending their cognition through a cognitive institution of art. This understanding supports, and generates new explanatory benefits for, Stecker’s approach.