Talk:The Extended Mind

Logan

Does Logan's work really belong here? Clark deals with the issue of language extensively in his books (2001, 2003, 2008), and if language is discussed at all in this article that seems the more appropriate discussion. More importantly, Clark and Chalmer's extended mind thesis is epistemological in nature, and the relationship to language discussed in this article seems tenuously related without further elaboration. The discussion of Chomsky's LAD is entirely inappropriate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.222.134.159 (talk) 17:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I've waited for a month for someone to defend Logan's edit of his own work into this article, and since no one has I am going to edit it out. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.17.194.83 (talk) 19:07, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I have undone the deletion on the basis of AndyClark's reference to my Extended Mind work in Chapts 3 and 4 of his recent book Supersizing the Mind : Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. I suggest that the unsigned deleter defer to Clark and leave the text alone until some other reader finds my addition offensive and is willing to sign their post. Logan1939 (talk) 14:17, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Could you at least do some work making the passage relevant to this article? Again the Chomsky stuff is completely inappropriate, and most of this has nothing to do with the Extended Mind thesis, which is an epistemological thesis, and really has very little to do with language. I think that sticking to the original Extended Mind article, and relevant extensions and reactions to that article, is appropriate here. Plugging your pet thesis isn't appropriate without some justification, and the fact that he uses you as a reference does not indicate that your theory is important to this particular article. I'm reverting the edit and requesting a mod come in to settle this dispute. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.222.134.159 (talk) 02:57, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I've removed it again, since the only defender of this content appears to be Logan himself. - MrOllie (talk) 21:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

What is this article about?

Is this article about the book by Logan? If so, why only mention the book's full title and author in the last paragraph? If it's about the concept of the extended mind, then it shouldn't start by saying "The Extended Mind is a book in the field of philosophy of mind". If this article is only about the book, maybe someone should start an article about the concept.VirtualDave 05:59, 2 November 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by VirtualDave (talk • contribs)

My solutions for the structure of this article: because the title is capitalized we could keep the article about a book, which should be that edited by Richard Menary and add information about the paper of Clark and Chalmers. Or we could drop the idea of book and change to article, the paper of Clark and Chalmers (and maybe delete the paragraph with Logan's book). OR we could only refer to the concept of "extended mind". Until a decision is taken, I've completed a few words in the direction of the first solution. KenyaSong (talk) 19:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Later edit: It seems that the only book with this title is the one edited by Richard Menary. KenyaSong (talk) 19:24, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Due to the continuing problems, I've added the cleanup-rewrite maintenance tag. Please rewrite this article. Viriditas (talk) 10:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Logan wrote a book with a similar title and seems to have inserted the mention of it here himself. Since it's mention here just confuses the issue, I've removed it. - MrOllie (talk) 21:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Criticism

Hi, I have two remarks about this topic. (a) Why is there wikipedia in the See Also section? (b) and secondly, there should be a critique added, on this thesis. A great example (and online available) is the critique of Jerry Fodor: see Jerry Fodor - Where is my mind?. I thought that critique was quite convincing. Why I am not adding/editing it myself? Mostly because I'm not a native English speaker. 91.176.9.71 (talk) 08:36, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

It is This edit that added the link wikipedia, and nothing else. It is the only contribution from this (86.101.248.139) IP 91.176.9.71 (talk) 08:48, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Structure

I've added some academic backing to this article (especially citations), but it seems to me too that it needs to be two articles, one on The Extended Mind edited by Richard Menary and one on The Extended Mind Thesis (EMT). As things stand, there is only the two-line lead about the former; the remainder of the article is about the EMT. Hong12kong (talk) 21:55, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Implications / Applications

This page might be improved by including a section on "Implications" or "Applications" of the extended mind idea, in much the same way that the page on, say, game theory, includes "General and applied uses". For instance, what are the implications and applications for the following components of mind: consciousness, memory, cognition and the initiation of behaviour and speech?

• Consciousness is extended through optical and auditory aids, which help us overcome visual and auditory impairments, or extend the natural range of human perception from that which is visible to the naked eye to that which is visible on microscopic or cosmic levels.
• Memory is extended through physical media such as personal notebooks and books in general, and by means of intangible media such as the internet itself and applications such as Evernote, Reminders, Springpad, MS OneNote, Simplenote and many others.
• Cognition is extended through hardware and software. For instance, ancient tools such as the abacus make possible high speed arithmetic. And modern tools such as tablet computers extend the capacity of the mind to perform far above it's unaided capabilities. Mathematics makes it possible for us to think about topics such as quantity, structure, space and change well beyond the capacity of our working memory. Similarly systems like Genrich Altshuller's TRIZ (the theory of inventive problem-solving) and Edward De Bono's ideas around lateral thinking extend the mind by providing heuristics, which are (according to Wikipedia) "mental short cuts to ease the cognitive load of making a decision" and which "speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution". Cognition is also extended through various kinds of software such as word processors (MS Word, Pages, GoogleDocs, spreadsheet applications (MS Excel, Google Spreadsheet), mind mapping applications (MindManager, FreeMind, Xmind, MindMeister), innovation management applications and crowd-sourced innovation platforms (such as InnoCentive), scheduling systems (such as Kanban), card sorting applications (such as Trello), image-editing and illustration apps (such as Photoshop and Illustrator), argument mapping software (such as Rationale) and many more.
• Initiation of behaviour and speech is extended by many tools from job aids which help people perform their work tasks, to software which aids communication. The latter includes software such as EZ Keys (used by Stephen Hawking) and web apps such as Facebook and Twitter which encourage social communication, or LinkedIn which encourages communication and networking in a business context.

In short, it seems as if there is abundant evidence of how the human mind has been and is being extended by various intangible methods, software and hardware. Yet this page is relatively thin on content. I would like to see this page expanded but I'm new to Wikipedia and I'm not sure of how to proceed. BarryKayton (talk) 17:27, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Title should be italicized

Inasmuch as there is already the WP article Extended cognition, the present article is presumably about the paper:

Andy Clark, David J Chalmers (January 1998). "The extended mind". Analysis. 58 (1): 7–19.

reprinted as:

Andy Clark, David J Chalmers (2010). "Chapter 2: The extended mind". In Richard Menary, ed (ed.). The Extended Mind. MIT Press. pp. 27–42. ISBN 9780262014038. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)

and available on line as:

"The extended mind". Cogprints..

According to WP Manual of Style the title should be italicized. Brews ohare (talk) 16:29, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I have rearranged the article to present the material in this light. Brews ohare (talk) 16:44, 20 February 2015 (UTC)