# Extended Mind Thesis **Domain:** Philosophy of Mind / Cognitive Science **Doc Type:** Theory Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition The **Extended Mind Thesis**, associated with Andy Clark and David Chalmers, argues that under appropriate conditions resources outside the biological brain can become constitutive parts of a cognitive process rather than merely tools used by it. The classic argument emphasizes functional integration: when an external resource is reliably available, automatically trusted and used as internal memory would be used, the boundary of cognition may extend across brain, body and environment. ## Machine-Intelligence Context Maps, search, feeds, recommender systems and AI assistants increasingly participate in remembering, orienting and anticipating. Institutions likewise think through databases, models and dashboards. This supports the claim that cognition can be distributed across human-machine systems. It does not follow that the entire network is conscious or that every frequently used device is literally part of one mind. Reliability, reciprocal coupling and integration matter, and constitution of cognition remains distinct from phenomenology. [[articles/Person of Interest and The Machine|Is Person of Interest's “The Machine” Real?]] uses the thesis to explain why [[wiki/The Machine|The Machine]] is best understood as an entangled cognitive system rather than an isolated model. ## See Also [[wiki/Distributed Intelligence|Distributed Intelligence]], [[wiki/Human-Machine Symbiosis|Human-Machine Symbiosis]], [[wiki/Global Workspace Theory|Global Workspace Theory]], [[wiki/Integrated Information Theory|Integrated Information Theory]], [[wiki/Plural Agency|Plural Agency]] ## Relationships - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts Butler's fictional answering writer offered a nineteenth-century **counterposition** to the anti-machine treatise: tools as detachable human limbs. This is a historical analogy to the later Extended Mind Thesis, not an attribution of Clark and Chalmers's thesis to Butler. > “Man, he said, was a machinate mammal. The lower animals keep all their limbs at home in their own bodies, but many of man’s are loose, and lie about detached, now here and now there, in various parts of the world.” > **— Samuel Butler's answering writer**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXV, “The Machines—concluded”* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Humans Are Machinate Mammals with Limbs Outside the Body by Samuel Butler|Humans Are Machinate Mammals with Limbs Outside the Body by Samuel Butler]] > "We are building new intelligent beings, but we are building them within ourselves. It is only artificial now, because it is new. As it becomes dominant, it will simply become intelligence." > **— Quentin Hardy**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Artificial Intelligence Is Being Built Inside Us by Quentin Hardy|Artificial Intelligence Is Being Built Inside Us by Quentin Hardy]] > "As computer systems are woven more deeply into the fabric of everyday life, the tension between intelligence augmentation and artificial intelligence has become increasingly visible." > **— John Markoff**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Augmentation and Artificial Intelligence Are Converging by John Markoff|Augmentation and Artificial Intelligence Are Converging by John Markoff]] > "For decades I've been an acolyte of Doug Engelbart, who believed that computers were machines for augmenting human intellect." > **— John Naughton**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Computers Were Built to Augment Human Intellect by John Naughton|Computers Were Built to Augment Human Intellect by John Naughton]] > "In the meantime I foresee the emergence of hybrid human-machine chimeras: human-born beings augmented with new machine abilities that enhance all or most of their human capacities, pleasures and psychological needs." > **— Maria Spiropulu**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Hybrid Human-Machine Chimeras Are Coming by Maria Spiropulu|Hybrid Human-Machine Chimeras Are Coming by Maria Spiropulu]] > "From the design of roads and buildings to the user-friendly features of consumer goods, the technologically extended phenotype has created the illusion that reality is inherently human-shaped." > **— Steve Fuller**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Technology Makes Reality Seem Human-Shaped by Steve Fuller|Technology Makes Reality Seem Human-Shaped by Steve Fuller]] > “We are already (mental) cyborgs.” > **— Andy Clark**, *2000, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY?”* [[reminders/Extended Mind/We Are Already Mental Cyborgs by Andy Clark|We Are Already Mental Cyborgs by Andy Clark]] > “Our minds arise not only from our own brains but from Internet prosthetic brains (IPBs) — those clusters of people with whom we share information and advice through electronic networks.” > **— Clifford Pickover**, *2010, Edge Annual Question: “HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?”* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Our Minds Now Run on Internet Prosthetic Brains by Clifford Pickover|Our Minds Now Run on Internet Prosthetic Brains by Clifford Pickover]] > “Thus, when asked to make a decision, who is the me who is actually making that decision?” > **— Clifford Pickover**, *2010, Edge Annual Question: “HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?”* [[reminders/Identity/Who Is the Me That Is Making the Decision by Clifford Pickover|Who Is the Me That Is Making the Decision by Clifford Pickover]] > “In the next decade, communities formed by ideas will be as strong as those formed by geography. The Internet will dissolve away nations as we know them today. Humanity becomes a single hive mind, with a group intelligence, as geography becomes putty in the hands of the Internet sculptor.” > **— Clifford Pickover**, *1999, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?”* [[reminders/Planetary Mind/Humanity Becomes a Single Hive Mind by Clifford Pickover|Humanity Becomes a Single Hive Mind by Clifford Pickover]] > “In the near future, software agents whose profiles have evolved alongside those of a specific individual will count as part of the individual person. To say that I use those software agents will be strictly false. Instead, my brain and the various personalized manifestations of new technology will constitute integrated thinking things.” > **— Andy Clark**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY?”* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Personalized Software Could Become Part of the Person by Andy Clark|Personalized Software Could Become Part of the Person by Andy Clark]] From [[wiki/Erewhon|Erewhon]]: This is the answering writer's counter-position inside the novel, not the professor's thesis. > "Machines are to be regarded as the mode of development by which human organism is now especially advancing, every past invention being an addition to the resources of the human body." > **— Samuel Butler's answering writer**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXV* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Machines Extend the Human Organism by Samuel Butler|Machines Extend the Human Organism by Samuel Butler]] From [[wiki/A Letter to Mother Nature|A Letter to Mother Nature]]: More proposes a distributed sensing and processing layer; it is an aspiration, not a demonstrated implant. > "We will supplement the neocortex with a 'metabrain'. This distributed network of sensors, information processors, and intelligence will increase our degree of self-awareness and allow us to modulate our emotions." > **— Max More**, *A Letter to Mother Nature, 1999 lecture; later revised author republication* [[reminders/Extended Mind/A Distributed Metabrain Could Augment Self-Awareness by Max More|A Distributed Metabrain Could Augment Self-Awareness by Max More]] From [[wiki/Erewhon|Erewhon]]: The answering writer inside Erewhon argues that tools are extra-corporeal human members; the preceding sentence is restored from the full text so the pocket-book line has its referent. > "Man has now many extra-corporeal members, which are of more importance to him than a good deal of his hair, or at any rate than his whiskers. His memory goes in his pocket-book." > **— Samuel Butler's answering writer**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXV* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Human Memory Already Lived Outside the Body by Samuel Butler|Human Memory Already Lived Outside the Body by Samuel Butler]] > “Humanity's eyes have now been widened to see that the rainbow of visible light is only an infinitesimal slice of the full electromagnetic spectrum. Spectroscopy is unweaving the rainbow on a grand scale. If Keats had known what Newton's unweaving would lead to — the expansion of our human vision, inspired by the expanding universe — he could not have drunk that toast.” > **— Richard Dawkins**, *1999 Edge Annual Question, response passage* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Spectroscopy Expanded the Human Sense of Sight by Richard Dawkins|Spectroscopy Expanded the Human Sense of Sight by Richard Dawkins]] ## Sources / Provenance - Andy Clark and David Chalmers, “The Extended Mind” (1998).