The Extended mind
This refers to the theory that your mind extends beyond your body, that actually we store memories in physical places as well. These physical places (such as this Tiddlywiki, or a notebook), then become extensions of our thinking.
In these cases, the human organism is linked with an external entity in a two-way interaction, creating a coupled system that can be seen as a cognitive system in its own right. All the components in the system play an active causal role, and they jointly govern behavior in the same sort of way that cognition usually does.
Animals display this behaviour as well in an example of panpsychism:
Just as octopuses appear to outsource information-processing tasks to their tentacles, or crickets to their tracheal tubes, perhaps spiders outsource information processing to objects outside of their bodies — their webs.
Networked thought perhaps? (Sorry.)
David Ralph Lewis- Notes
This page modified on 13 Oct 2021 at 15:36