Tag: Extended Mind

David Weinberger on The Extended Mind Hypothesis

Interesting David Weinberger overview of the extended mind hypothesis.

The answer is that we assume that thinking is something we do in our heads. But this is not a natural idea. It has a long and well-known history, having received its definitive formulation in the 17th century by the philosopher Rene Descartes. It has become so ingrained in us that we now often actually experience thinking as an echo in our skull.

For almost 20 years, advocates of the “extended mind” theory have been providing an explanation that seems to me to be truer to our experience and more explanatory: We think out in the world with tools. This is distinctive of our species and helps to explain our evolutionary advantages. Other species use tools to do things. Only humans (as far as we know) use tools to think.

First proposed in the late 1990s by Andy Clark and David Chalmers, the extended mind theory has gained a fair bit of traction, with supporters applying it as far as they can.

For example, usually we assume that when a human does something in the world on purpose, she has an intention to do so, and that intention is something mental that the human brings to the engagement. If you are knitting a sweater or chipping a rock into an axe head, it’s because you have a mental intention to create a sweater or an axe. But some supporters of the extended mind theory argue that even intentions are not mental.

There is a great deal of academic debate about the validity of the extended mind hypothesis, but setting that aside, it is at least an interesting way to contextualize and consider how our thinking is influenced (and in same cases completely predicated upon) external objects.

Are We Out Of Our Minds (Or Our Minds Out of Us?)

Probably not many people’s idea of good relaxing reading, but Jerry Fodor takes on the Extended Mind Thesis in a review of Andy Clark’s Supersizing the Mind.

To oversimplify it a bit, the extended mind thesis claims that technology literally extends our minds outside of our bodies such as, for example, when we’re using a smart phone. Quoting Fodor quoting David Chalmers’ foreword to Supersizing the Mind,

I bought an iPhone. The iPhone has already taken over some of the central functions of my brain  . . . The iPhone is part of my mind alrady . . . [Clark’s] marvellous book . . . defends the thesis that, in at least some of these cases the world is not serving as a mere instrument for the mind. Rather, the relevant parts of the world may have become parts of my mind. My iPhone is not my tool, or at least it is not wholly my tool. Parts of it have become parts of me . . .  When parts of the environment are coupled to the brain in the right way, they become parts of the mind.

I won’t go into more detail as Fodor does an excellent job of explaining the thesis and some criticisms of it, except to note that along with technology other people would seem to also be part of the extended mind imagined by Clark and Chalmers.

For example, there is a whole class of things that rather than my smart phone I consult my wife about. Restaurant food, for example. My wife can remember exactly what I want to eat at many food establishments, whereas I don’t consider it worth my time to commit this to memory and so will interrogate the waiters about this and that food choice.

Frequently, it is just easier for me to turn to my wife and ask her what I should order since she is able to much more quickly access what it is I would like at a given place than I would. Under Clark and Chalmers formulation it would seem my wife is part of my extended mind. I haven’t read enough to know what their view on other people as part of the extended mind is, but it certainly would be an odd result if they affirm this.