Extended Mind, Extended Self

Ricky Dean is not your typical 19-year-old.  Indeed, he puts his fellow teenagers to shame when it came to being addicted to his smartphone.  While for some a smartphone seems a pleasant luxury, for Ricky it is a tool for survival.  Starved of oxygen at birth, he has virtually no memory or concept of time.  For this reason Ricky keeps extensive lists in his phone in order to complete routine tasks and remember vital facts (For the complete article on Ricky Dean, see http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/08/06/1-year-old-man-lives-with-no-memory.)

Ricky’s condition provides compelling evidence for the theory of extended cognition.  In its simplest form, this theory argues that the mind is not contained within the skull, but instead extends into the world. Authors Andy Clark and David Chalmers explore the notion of extended cognition in “The Extended Mind” (Analysis, Vol 58, No. 1).  They cite concrete examples, such as “the use of pen and paper to perform long multiplication,” to illustrate their point.  Here, the brain assigns some tasks to “manipulations of external media,” while completing the rest by itself.  The brain is capable of performing these tasks, but it reduces its memory load by allowing the environment to fulfill them.

Moreover, Clark and Chalmers profile their own version of Ricky Dean.  “Otto” has Alzheimer’s and uses a notebook as his “memory.”  Otto and a normally functioning person both wish to visit a museum, with the former using his notebook for directions and the latter using her memory.  “In relevant respects,” Clark and Chalmers argue, “the cases are entirely analogous.”  The notebook simply functions as an extension of Otto’s mind.

When computers first became available, many expected that they would allow people to work less.  Instead, they simply enabled workers to do different, and in some cases even more, work.  With new technology, we are more dependent on extended cognition than any other generation in history.  In many cases, the extensions allow us to invest our mental capital in other things.  But what happens when we can’t access our technology?  We are lost.

Further, our technology has become part of our identities.  Indeed, the idea of an extended self logically follows from an extended mind.  The separation anxiety we feel when apart from our phones and laptops demonstrates the place these objects hold in our identities.  These advances have unequivocally improved not just Ricky Dean’s life, but our lives as well.  But I think it’s time that we take back our identities.