Friday, February 11, 2005

Yes, There Exists an Academic Front for Amity in Edinburgh (Part I)

(Juxtaposed with “Sex and Drugs in Amsterdam"—I have to make it look like I’m doing something here!)

“The extended mind” is a term introduced by AC/DC (as it’s often notated): Andy Clark and Dave Chalmers. This notion suggests that we rely on external objects in the environment to expand the rather simple capabilities of our biological brain. For example, the maths that a person is capable of doing purely in the head is rather limited. But, we can go beyond our (internal) mind to perform such tasks and use things like fingers for counting or paper and pen for higher maths. Another example comes from the film Memento. The main character has short-term memory loss and thus takes pictures of significant things in his life and/or writes everything else down so that he can “remember” or reference these jotted down facts for later use—his day-to-day functioning relies on the entries he makes. He refers to his notebook and pictures in a very similar way in which we refer to our own memories within our heads; the difference is that his memory is externally stored. Computers, art, writing, marks on fossil bones for counting, human language: those are all tools of the extended mind (“epistemic artefacts”).

Andy—as I now refer to him (he’s just arrived at my university and I’ve been auditing his class)—has acknowledged that many people regard this idea as trivial, obvious, or mundane, while a few others think it’s absolutely ludicrous and highly debateable. I suppose, however, that’s the essence of philosophical studies. In fact, a friend of mine regarded all studies in the humanities and social “sciences” as “the study of the formal terminology for things you already know.” The humanities are funny, indeed. Talking to Andy the other day and the subject of “thought experiments” came up. I chortled; he chortilly retorted, “Well, if a thought experiment can prove the point, then why go on to empirical research?”

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

For someone who does not have alziemers, how is a computer or camera, etc. an example of the "extended mind". The digital camera, for example, takes photographs for us to capture and remember places, people and events. In this sense it is an external memory. The way in which people keep and delete certain pictures as well as edit them, however, makes it a very selective memory. The digitally stored photograph is not a reliable external memory either as it can easily be deleted or destroyed and changes in storage formats on obslete media can make data recovery impossible in some instances. Furthermore the photograph acts as a trigger for the memories that we already remember (albeit vaguely) - when one looks back on their old photo albums they are not seeing entirely alien images.
So how do you explain that the computer, camera, etc. are examples of the "extended mind"?

6/06/2005 3:59 PM  
Blogger Amity said...

The reason cases of alzhiemer’s and amenesia cases are so often cited is because they are dramatic cases that easily illustrate the notion of the extended mind. If their “extended self” is lost or damaged, a greater part of their ‘self’ (whatever that is) will be lost because to a much greater extent than healthy minds, they rely on external cog-tools.

But you don’t need to have a damaged mind to extend cognitive processes into the environment. You are right to point out that technologies like digital cameras and computers confer a very selective and malleable notion of the mind, and because of that fact, it could be argued that these technologies aren’t like the mind at all. On the other hand, our biological minds are just as open to sabotage (by self or others), suggestion, or selective memory. For instance, if I’m at a pub eyeing some hottie, I may think that they are returning the flirtatious looks only because I want them to be; however, in reality nothing of the sort is going on. I see what I want to see. Another major fallibility of the bio-mind is that its attentional focus and perception can be very limited. An awesome (and entertaining) experiment has the subjects watch a game of scratch basketball and count the number of passes made. During the game a person in a gorilla suit walks through the game and does a little dance—half the subjects don’t report seeing the gorilla! However, surely if you saw a still photo of the basketball game, you’d pick right up on the gorilla in the midst (ba dum CHING!).

I recently went to a cool talk given by Mike Wheeler, in which he said (bio) memory isn’t post-perceptual recall but post-perceptual reconstruction; memory is a constructive process. I like that idea. On that line of thinking, a photo or a mental picture or a smell or any stimulus—internal or external—can trigger the reconstruction of a memory. It’s really just a question of whether we use our perceptual modalities (like sight, hearing, touch, etc.) that connect us with the outside world or whether we use internal (mentalistic) strategies to conjure up in image or thought.

Thanks for your comments, Friend.

Gorilla video (although I’ve spoiled the fun for you readers, you can try it out on friends):
http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html

Other fun perception videos: http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/djs_lab/demos.html

6/17/2005 1:03 PM  

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