Beyond the Hearing Mind: Deaf Ecosystems, Agentic AI and the Governance of Extended Cognition
Abstract
The Extended Mind Theory, in its classical formulation by Clark and Chalmers, presupposes an implicitly normotypical and hearing cognitive subject. This paper argues that the Deaf community, as a historically distributed cognitive ecosystem in which body, space, and language are structurally inseparable, does not merely exemplify extended cognition but radically interrogates its residual individualistic assumptions. Drawing on Bateson’s cybernetics, Hutchins’ distributed cognition, Malafouris’ Material Engagement Theory, and 4E cognitive science, the paper develops an analytical proposal articulated across three levels (artefacts, environments, and epistemic governance) for AI-extended educational ecosystems, with particular attention to the structural lacunae of the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act with respect to signed languages as cognitive systems. The central argument is that the extended mind is institutionally contested and that existing regulatory frameworks reproduce, in algorithmic form, the same structures that have historically impoverished Deaf cognitive ecosystems, perpetuating in algorithmic logic what the Milan Congress of 1880 had sedimented in educational policy.
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