There’s a great new article on the extended mind, titled, “How Google Is Making Us Smarter“, in Discover Magazine’s latest issue. You should definitely check it out.
The theory of the extended mind suggests that the mind is not contained exclusively ‘inside’ the skull, but rather that it extends into the external environment. While our mind can use the structure of our brain to store information, it also uses other structures in the outside world for cognitive functioning too. The classic example for this is the use of notepads or chalkboards as extended memory. To aid in the memorization of things, like classroom lessons or a friend’s phone number, we often utilize records stored on chalkboards or cell phones to remind us later of the information. According to this theory, the mind is intricately connected to its external environment through this kind of cognitive scaffolding. In fact, this externalism is necessary for real time, efficient action in the world. It bypasses the problem of an information bottleneck that would hamper real time cognitive processing if we had to store all of the relevant information about the world internally.
The article in Discover debunks the old myth that increasingly useful technology is making us dumb and lazy because it lessens the burden on our own brains. Rather, technology like the internet is making us smarter, because it is increasing our capacity to network with the extended world.
The theory of the extended mind was first proposed by philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers in a short essay aptly titled “The Extended Mind” in 1998.
[...] Nelson, The Extended Mind: Technology is Making Us Smarter Discover the [...]
I don’t see how this concept of “extended mind” increases our understanding of the world so that the concept of tools is no longer adequate. I used to have an intellectual tool to find out the meaning of words called a dictionary and in that case I was interacting with an external reality. Is it useful to separate mental tools from physical tools which augment body functions such as levers or telescopes1, and call only the mental tools “extensions of the mind”. Physical tools have long been described as extensions of the senses1 and that is because they magnify a particular sense. Mental tools magnify a mental capacity such as memory. I don’t see the need for a metaphysical theory that conflates a mental tool into part of the extended mind. It becomes hard to distinguish. Beavers build dams instinctively as do birds build nests and termites build mounds. So do they not have minds and only humans or maybe chimps have minds because when they build a house, or a nest, or a dam, it is a result of a conscious effort? Does a chimp which fishes for termites with a branch achieve an expanded awareness because it is able to manipulate termites and a branch because they exist externally or because the mind
of the chimp is able to recognize reality objects as potential tools?
I see this notion of “extended mind” as yet another exemplar of metaphysical whimsy. Does the telescope which is the physical extension of the sense of vision change the embodiment of the brain so that the mind is now extended? We have made progress by defining boundaries, not obscuring them. Please use this edited submission and delete the original comments.
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“Beavers build dams instinctively as do birds build nests and termites build mounds.”
lolz at instinctively. you could say that snow leopards are “hard wired” to hunt and kill too but as its been seen, year olds that are the size of the mother are still dependent until they develop an enskilled “mind” of how to take care of themselves. we could also use examples like Sapolsky’s baboons that has seemingly subverted the “instinctual” dominance hierarchy of males in a group over a span of a few generations. the instinct / “preset” program line is just old and tired. even birds change their calls from region to region, etc.
and the mind is always extending out into the world, regardless of the tool, because it leaks out into the world in a field of relations with other Things and beings/minds.
progress by creating boundaries? wow, no thanks.
whats more ridiculous is that the interaction with google somehow makes someone more intelligent under a field of relations with machines, but someone who, say, lives in a tropical forest where their “meshwork” of knowledge comes from a myriad of relations with species, landscape, etc… to know… yet, somehow that perspective is neglected from the conversation of intelligence because the veneer of technology isnt there. is that person suppose to be a “naked” mind? hardly.
and how do these people know the scaffolding of the ‘non-literate’? reading changes the mindware, doesnt mean it makes it “better”. theres a mindware of non-literacy most of these philosophers cant even imagine except as brief moments before they were trained to read/write.