Toward Extended Music Cognition: Commentary on Music and Cognitive Extension

Abstract

In his paper, Luke Kersten (2014) argues that since music cognition is part of a locationally wide computational system, it can be considered as an extended process. Overall I sympathize with Kersten’s (2014) view. However, in the present paper I underline those issues that need to be, in my opinion, developed in a more detailed and cautious way. Extended music perception is the idea that “it ain’t all in the head”, but rather involves the exploitation of non-neural body and musical environment. In order to push the debate further, I suggest situating Kersten’s views within a broader context of recent research, thus strengthening the theoretical importance of his proposal.