The extended mind

The rug is quickly being pulled out from under western concepts of mind, body, and the mind-body connection.

Neuroscience and technology are doing most of the pulling.

Jonah Lehrer has a blog post called ‘The iPhone Mind’ that speaks to the new territory we are quickly entering.

He quotes philosopher David Chalmers:

“The key idea is that when bits of the environment are hooked up to your cognitive system in the right way, they are, in effect, part of the mind, part of the cognitive system. So, say I’m rearranging Scrabble tiles on a rack. This is very close to being analogous to the situation when I’m doing an anagram in my head. In one case the representations are out in the world, in the other case they’re in here. We say doing an anagram on a rack ought be regarded as a cognitive process, a process of the mind, even though it’s out there in the world.”

This is where the iPhone comes in, as a more contemporary example of how the extended mind works.

“A whole lot of my cognitive activities and my brain functions have now been uploaded into my iPhone. It stores a whole lot of my beliefs, phone numbers, addresses, whatever. It acts as my memory for these things. It’s always there when I need it.”

Chalmers even claims it holds some of his desires.

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This notion of the extended mind seems very useful, but represents an incredible departure from the Cartesian self/other logic that has so heavily informed western thought and lifestyle.

I still am struck by the irony that science – in the form of neuroscience – is bringing us full circle to realize the ’supernatural’ structures embedded in all of us. (supernatural in the sense that they very much go beyond our working understanding of what is ‘natural’).

I think that our concept of nature will have to expand right alongside with our concept of mind until we realize the extent to which our minds are a reflection of a larger ecological system…and on some level not just plastic but also fundamentally illusive as object.

Moving forward, I think it will make sense, not to talk about a mind, but rather a cognitive systems…not to talk about nature, but rather ecological systems that we are very much designed and designing ourselves into.

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