The tools we use to help us think—from language to smartphones—may be part of thought

The tools we use to help us think—from language to smartphones—may be part of thought itself.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/...andy-clark

Consider a woman named Inga, who wants to go to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She consults her memory, recalls that the museum is on Fifty-third Street, and off she goes. Now consider Otto, an Alzheimer’s patient. Otto carries a notebook with him everywhere, in which he writes down information that he thinks he’ll need. His memory is quite bad now, so he uses the notebook constantly, looking up facts or jotting down new ones. One day, he, too, decides to go to MoMA, and, knowing that his notebook contains the address, he looks it up.

Before Inga consulted her memory or Otto his notebook, neither one of them had the address “Fifty-third Street” consciously in mind; but both would have said, if asked, that they knew where the museum was—in the way that if you ask someone if she knows the time she will say yes, and then look at her watch. So what’s the difference? You might say that, whereas Inga always has access to her memory, Otto doesn’t always have access to his notebook. He doesn’t bring it into the shower, and can’t read it in the dark. But Inga doesn’t always have access to her memory, either—she doesn’t when she’s asleep, or drunk.

Andy Clark, a philosopher and cognitive scientist at the University of Edinburgh, believes that there is no important difference between Inga and Otto, memory and notebook. He believes that the mind extends into the world and is regularly entangled with a whole range of devices. But this isn’t really a factual claim; clearly, you can make a case either way. No, it’s more a way of thinking about what sort of creature a human is. Clark rejects the idea that a person is complete in himself, shut in against the outside, in no need of help.

How is it that human thought is so deeply different from that of other animals, even though our brains can be quite similar? The difference is due, he believes, to our heightened ability to incorporate props and tools into our thinking, to use them to think thoughts we could never have otherwise. If we do not see this, he writes, it is only because we are in the grip of a prejudice—“that whatever matters about my mind must depend solely on what goes on inside my own biological skin-bag, inside the ancient fortress of skin and skull.”

One problem with his Otto example, Clark thinks, is that it can suggest that a mind becomes extended only when the ordinary brain isn’t working as it should and needs a supplement—something like a hearing aid for cognition. This in turn suggests that a person whose mind is deeply linked to devices must be a medical patient or else a rare, strange, hybrid creature out of science fiction—a cyborg. But in fact, he thinks, we are all cyborgs, in the most natural way. Without the stimulus of the world, an infant could not learn to hear or see, and a brain develops and rewires itself in response to its environment throughout its life. Any human who uses language to think with has already incorporated an external device into his most intimate self, and the connections only proliferate from there.

In Clark’s opinion, this is an excellent thing...

I wonder what people here think about the prospect of technological enhancement of the brain. Would an extra memory drive or a processing unit be part of us, or just something we communicate with?

Maybe not relevant to the example above but I often notice that people tend to use memory and recall interchangeably. Of course, recall is the way we access memories but the memories themselves are probably a mystery. Do we know how and where they are stored? Are they permanent even if recall is broken? Some cases of sudden spontaneous recall with Alzheimer's patients (particularly with terminal lucidity) and also techniques using hypnosis to access supposedly lost memories would suggest permanence.

I wonder what people here think about the prospect of technological enhancement of the brain. Would an extra memory drive or a processing unit be part of us, or just something we communicate with?

Isn't technological enhancement of the brain science fiction ? What enhancement are you referring to ? I think all us here, seeing as we're all human; (my wife might disagree some times) have the right to comment on this problem even without a grounding in neurology. My understanding is that we have no idea where memories are stored.
 
Wilder Penfield (as I'm sure you and many others will know) carried of by far the most extensive work on this problem when he was trying to improve the lives of epileptics. In stimulating the brain surface to try to induce the irregular discharge causing the problem, he would often elicit a very clear memory from the patient. But after he'd removed that particular small area, the patient could still recall the event.

He noticed something even more bewildering, that there was a 'duality' of consciousness during the process. The patient would feel as if they were really there back in the place of the memory, so much so that they could clearly see, smell and hear tiny details but they were also still mentally present in the operating room at the same time.

You won't be surprised to hear that I believe that memory is not stored in the brain. People completely separated from their bodies during OBE's/NDE's have everything 'complete,' memory wise. Of course, materialists find such notions highly amusing. I suspect the mind and the brain are linked in a way we'll probably never understand unless we can develop a machine to examine the 'soul.' Whatever the soul is...but I think that's also probably science fiction too. 

 http://www.custance.org/Library/MIND/chapter5.html

Isn't technological enhancement of the brain science fiction ? What enhancement are you referring to ? I think all us here, seeing as we're all human; (my wife might disagree some times) have the right to comment on this problem even without a grounding in neurology. My understanding is that we have no idea where memories are stored.
 
Wilder Penfield (as I'm sure you and many others will know) carried of by far the most extensive work on this problem when he was trying to improve the lives of epileptics. In stimulating the brain surface to try to induce the irregular discharge causing the problem, he would often elicit a very clear memory from the patient. But after he'd removed that particular small area, the patient could still recall the event.

He noticed something even more bewildering, that there was a 'duality' of consciousness during the process. The patient would feel as if they were really there back in the place of the memory, so much so that they could clearly see, smell and hear tiny details but they were also still mentally present in the operating room at the same time.

You won't be surprised to hear that I believe that memory is not stored in the brain. People completely separated from their bodies during OBE's/NDE's have everything 'complete,' memory wise. Of course, materialists find such notions highly amusing. I suspect the mind and the brain are linked in a way we'll probably never understand unless we can develop a machine to examine the 'soul.' Whatever the soul is...but I think that's also probably science fiction too. 

 http://www.custance.org/Library/MIND/chapter5.html

That was a great article! So... as much as the materialists sneeringly dismiss dualism... it seems like such an existence is possible.

While I still feel that Consciousness is the Monad within which All exists and comes from, this Monad could all too easily create all of the elements of a dualism of mind and matter, programmed, if you will, to act in certain ways. And so, matter on its own can only act according to its programming, its irreducible nature... add a mind to possess that matter, to command it, and it will oblige, because that is part of matter's nature... perhaps that mind, ego, is a superior idea to it.

And if one is willing to consider the idea of a Self, a Soul, a Beingness beyond the physical dimensions, that directs the mind to act accordingly to certain programmed instincts... and *maybe* past-life memories that vary in their lucidity to whatever degree, that could explain a bit more about our nature, and how it connects with the ideas of Psi, communication with disembodied consciousness, NDEs, past-life memories, etc.

Anyways, back on topic to the OP.

Yes - on reflection, my question should have ended, "Or do you think such things are just impossible?"

That was a great article! So... as much as the materialists sneeringly dismiss dualism... it seems like such an existence is possible.

While I still feel that Consciousness is the Monad within which All exists and comes from, this Monad could all too easily create all of the elements of a dualism of mind and matter, programmed, if you will, to act in certain ways. And so, matter on its own can only act according to its programming, its irreducible nature... add a mind to possess that matter, to command it, and it will oblige, because that is part of matter's nature... perhaps that mind, ego, is a superior idea to it.

And if one is willing to consider the idea of a Self, a Soul, a Beingness beyond the physical dimensions, that directs the mind to act accordingly to certain programmed instincts... and *maybe* past-life memories that vary in their lucidity to whatever degree, that could explain a bit more about our nature, and how it connects with the ideas of Psi, communication with disembodied consciousness, NDEs, past-life memories, etc.

Anyways, back on topic to the OP.

Thanks, Valmar. Yes, it seems Penfield was a dualist. Sceptics tend to ignore that.

Yes - on reflection, my question should have ended, "Or do you think such things are just impossible?"

Yes.