Happy Mind: The Philosophy and Science of Happiness

Where is the mind located?

 
Katherine Power introduces the extended mind theory, the subject matter of her short story The Notebook (and of her MPhil).

A common view amongst philosophers of mind is that mental states are 'physically realised'. This means that, if I believe that Magritte was a painter, there is something physical in the world which makes up that belief. Let's say the belief is realised by a neural pattern of activation in my brain. If we took that pattern away, and did not replace it with another physical state serving the same role, I would no longer believe that Magritte was a painter.

I agree with the general idea that the mind can be externally realised, but in the story I show how there are important functional differences between ordinary belief and the kind of extended belief Clark and Chalmers describe. The point isn't to find faults with their example. My argument is that one of the exciting features of externally realised mental states is that external objects allow us to do more than we could otherwise: they introduce new kinds of cognition.

This fits in well with Clark's idea, explored in "Natural Born Cyborgs" (2003), that our ability to 'bond with technology' is what made some of our greatest cognitive achievements possible. We can do simple sums in our heads, but try learning how to do them without external aids like pen and paper. Or try proving Fermat's last theorem.

© Katherine Power 2006. Published in Philosophy Now, Issue 55, May/June 2006.

Katherine E. Power is a freelance writer and the editor of Happy Mind. Her website can be found at: www.katherinepower.com.