Anticynical #16: The Extended Mind - Part 1
Anticynical #16: The Extended Mind - Part 1
Encore: The Extended Mind
Hey there 👋,
Welcome again to the 16th edition of Anticynical! In the last edition, I wrote about an analogy between self-doubt and the grandfather paradox.
Two weeks ago, I sent out an email (the original 16th edition) with an essay on the idea of the The Extended Mind.
The extended mind idea is really fascinating, and I believe that essay was one of the most interesting essays I’ve ever sent out.
However, in spite of that, the response and reader stats of the essay were disappointing. I suspect the main reason was the length of the essay: it was almost 3000 words long, which is almost 3-4 times longer than my usual essays.
Thus, I've decided to re-do the Extended Mind essay as a series. Over the course of this week and the next two, I'll be releasing it in three digestible parts, aiming to provide clarity without the overwhelming length. This way, the essence of the concept can be appreciated in bite-sized reads. Enjoy!
Idea: The Extended Mind - Part 1: What is it?
In an age where our smartphones and computers feel like an extension of ourselves, I’d like to delve deeper into the nature of this extension. The intrinsic parts of our mind, along with cognitive tools and extensions, together can be called the extended mind.
The term "extended mind" was popularized by a seminal paper titled "The Extended Mind" written by philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers in 1998. The main thrust of the paper is a philosophical argument asserting that objects in the external environment can become part of an individual's mind when they play the right kind of role in one's cognitive processes.
The question, “Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” is the first line from the paper by Clark and Chalmers. They champion the idea of active externalism, suggesting that when a human and an external entity form a coupled system, they should be viewed as a collective cognitive unit. Removing the external component would impair the system's competence, akin to removing a part of its brain.
These entities in the external environment can be physical—phones, computers, and notebooks—or abstract—language, writing, and culture.
It’s easy to see why a physical tool like my smartphone could be considered a part of my extended mind. My smartphone augments my thinking via enhanced information storage and retrieval, searching through immense information, and much more.
Why would language be considered an extension of our cognitive faculties? Think of it this way: language provides us with frameworks to break down, analyze, and communicate complex ideas. Without the vocabulary and structure of language, many thoughts would remain nebulous, fleeting, or even unreachable. Just as a calculator extends our mathematical abilities, language extends our capacity to think, reason, and share knowledge.
Similarly, culture serves as a vast repository of shared knowledge, norms, and practices. It's a collective database that we tap into, both consciously and unconsciously, to navigate our world. When we follow a cultural norm or use a cultural reference, we are, in essence, offloading our cognitive processing to the collective wisdom accumulated over generations. It's like accessing a cloud-based storage system where societal learnings and nuances are saved.
Thinking over the idea of the extended mind over a few weeks, I realized that there were two questions I wanted to explore:
How have our extended minds evolved over time?
What will the future of our extended minds look like in a digital age (and how can we be better prepared for this future)?
I will address the first question in the series's next part, part two, and the second question in part three.
Stay tuned as we journey through the evolution of our extended minds and ponder their future in the subsequent parts of this series.
I want to thank Akshat Naik for his initial thoughts and introducing me to the term “extended mind.” Thank you Shanece Grant and
for your feedback on the draft.Question: What are some tools or entities that feel like a part of your mind?
The keyboard of my computer feels very much like a part of my mind. I don’t think about what keys to press. I think in words or phrases and they just “magically” appear on the screen.
Another example: Python, the programming language, is an abstract entity that feels like a part of my mind. Over years of practice, my familiarity is at a point that I no longer think according to various language constructs; I just think about the problem I’m trying to solve and the code just flows out of me.
I'd love to hear from you…
Your thoughts on the extended mind idea.
Things that feel like a part of your mind.
Or anything else at all. Just hit reply.