Extended Mind
- paper by Andy Clark and David Chalmers
- propose idea that objects in the environment are part of the mind
- thought experiment:
- Otto and Inga are going to a museum
- Otto has Alzheimer's disease
- both have a belief of where the museum is
- Inga consults her memory to know
- Otto consults his notebook to know (his mind is extended to include the notebook as memory)
- the only difference in these two cases is that Inga's memory is being internally processed by the brain, while Otto's memory is being served by the notebook
- this could be extended to also hold parts of memory/thinking in other agents (people, computers, etc...)
- important to note that "extended mind" is mainly based on language, so other forms of thinking are harder/impossible? (body-thinking, etc.)
- related to:
The cockpit, with its pilots and instruments forming a single cognitive system, can only be understood when we understand, as a unity, the contributions of the individual agents in the system and the coordination necessary among the agents to enact the goal, that is, to achieve "the successful completion of a flight."
— A Small Matter of Programming - Bonnie Nardi