Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
Logo Thémata

CLASSIC TEXTS (TRANSLATIONS)

No. 67

Andy Clark and David Chalmers, The extended mind

  • Sergio Quintero
DOI
https://doi.org/10.12795/themata.2023.i67.11
Submitted
August 31, 2019
Published
2023-06-30

Abstract

This article, published in 1998 in Analysis magazine (58: 10-23), is one of the most interesting texts in the philosophical debate around technological tools and their influence on the human mind. Chalmers, a philosopher at the University of Arizona, and Clark, at the time a researcher in Philosophy at the University of Washington in its Department of Philosophy, resumed with great spark the philosophical debate that, around cognition, language and the social environment , occupied great thinkers of the 20th century, such as Jean Piaget, Noam Chomsky, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam or Tyler Burge. The innovation of Chalmers and Clark was to base their argument on the synergy between the human being and innovative digital tools such as the computer. They intend to show how Putnam's theses regarding the mental extension produced by the language tool can be staged by the mental extension that artificial intelligence and new-age computers suppose. The style and quality of the article also opened the way to a completely modern contemplation of old psychological problems, which were somewhat in decline of late.

References

  1. Beer, R.: Intelligence as Adaptive Behavior. Nueva York: Academic, 1989.
  2. Blake, A; y Yuilee, A. (eds.): Active Vision. Cambridge: MIT, 1992.
  3. Burge, T.: “Individualism and the mental” en Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 4, 1979, pp. 73-122.
  4. Chalmers, D. J.: The components of content. Chalmers, D. J. (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings. Oxford: Oxford University, 2002.
  5. Clark, A.: Microcognition. Cambridge: MIT, 1989.
  6. Haugeland, J.: Mind embodied and embedded. Houng, Y.; y Ho, J. (eds.), Mind and Cognition. Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1995.
  7. Hutchins, E.: Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge: MIT, 1995.
  8. Kirsh, D.: “The intelligent use of space” en Artificial Intelligence, 73, 1995, pp. 31-68.
  9. Kirsh, D.; y Maglio, P.: “On distinguishing epistemic from pragmatic action” en Cognitive Science, 18, 1994, pp. 513-549.
  10. McClamrock, R.: Existential Cognition. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995.
  11. McClelland, J. L; Rumelhart, D. E.; y Hinton, G. E.: The appeal of parallel distributed processing. McClelland, J. L.; y Rumelhart, D. E. (eds.), Parallel Distributed Processing (Vol. 2). Cambridge: MIT, 1986.
  12. Putnam, H.: The meaning of ‘meaning’. Gunderson, K. (ed.), Language, Mind, and Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1975.
  13. Suchman, L.: Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1987.
  14. Thelen, E.; y Smith, L.: A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Develpment of Cognition and Action. Cambridge: MIT, 1994.
  15. Ullman, S.; y Richards, W.: Image Understanding. Norwood: Ablex, 1984.
  16. Varela, F.; Thompson, E.; y Rosch, E.: The Embodied Mind. Cambridge: MIT, 1991.
  17. Wilson, R.: “Wide computationalism” en Mind, 103, 1994, pp. 351-372.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.