It is hard to comprehend consciousness when incomprehension and consciousness seem to go hand in hand.
It is so hard to contemplate the interaction between memory, thinking and action because simply put we still know so little about the mind, brain and subjective experience.
In this intriguing video, academic Jeff Kosmoski attempts to summarise his answer to the “hard problem of consciousness”.
One of the better elements of this video is Kosmoski’s succinct explanation of our actual problem in understanding consciousness (see 0:38). Put simply the issue is that we, as humans, struggle to understand how the physical activity occurring in our brains, that is the movement of neurons, facilitate the completely subjective thoughts and experiences we as individuals have every second of every day.
This is a loaded problem, and one I will happily (and necessarily) avoid in this blog. But what it does provide is an additional layer of required thinking when analysing the idea of the extended mind and mnemotechnics. The extended mind refers to the concept that the operation of the mind extends outside the realm of the body and actively exists in the physical environment. The concept is pioneered by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in their text “The Extended Mind” (Clark& Chalmers 1998). They consider the mind and the environment as a “coupled system” and it is this system that wholly facilitates our cognitive process.
Examples of this coupled system in work are wide and varied. As Bernard Stiegler highlights in his article “Anamnesis and Hypomnesis”, recording a thought or a reminder on a slip of paper causes part of our memory to be transferred to that physical object. He argues all human memory is “exteriorized” (turned outwards) and the method of recording our memory through mediums such as paper, video, sound recording etc, are examples of mnemotechniques with the mediums themselves examples of mnemotechnology (Steigler n.d).
But the extended mind operates in more complex and potentially revolutionary ways, as the video below highlights:
The vibrations caused externally to the body as a result of an interaction with the physical environment then interacts with the mind itself to allow the woman to catch the ball without her other senses such as sight or hearing.
The issue is, while it is fairly easy to conceptualize and see memories being extended outside the body what we cannot comprehend is how the mind itself allows for this chain of reactions to occur. What is happening in our mind that allows us to utilise pen and paper as a medium for extending our mind. But beyond that what is happening in our own brains that causes that memory to be recorded in a personal subjective way with an individual style of writing, individual handwiriting. Is the physical activity in our brain somehow different to everyone else on the planet?
This is the hard question of consciousness. Starting from Descartes’ theory of dualism (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind) , basically the idea that the operation of our individual minds is not a physical process), theorist have pondered this question and have developed a range of, but ultimately flawed, theories and answers. In the end this will continue to place restriction on our complete comprehension and expansion of this concept of the extended mind.
REFERENCES
Wikipedia. “Dualism (philosophy of the mind)” (2011) [Online, accessed 18/03/2011] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind)
Wikipedia. “The Extended Mind” (2011) [Online, accessed 17/03/2011] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Mind
Steigler, B. “Anamnesis and Hyoomnesis” (n.d). Ars Industrialis. [Online, accessed 17/03/2011] http://arsindustrialis.org/anamnesis-and-hypomnesis
Clark, A & Chalmers, D ”The Extended Mind” (1998) Analysis 58:10-23
Chalmers, D. “The Extended Mind Revisited (1/5) at Honk Kong” (2009). [Online video, accessed 17/03/2011] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S149IVHhmc
Dalton, S. “E sense” (n.d) [Online video, accessed 18/03/2011] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHTtri5jGDc
Komoski, J. “Solving the Hard Question of Consciousness ” [Online video, accessed 18/03/2011] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQKNhQ0Spqw&NR=1
Tags: ARTS3091, Seminar: Thurs 2-4
