The systems involvedare complex, involving interaction among and feedback between manyparts. Any changes to such a system will cascade in ways that are diffi-cult to predict; this is especially true when human actions are involved.

“People always say of great athletes that they have a sixth sense,” Malcolm Gladwell says in Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon. “But it’s not a sixth sense. It’s memory.” Gladwell then analogizes James’ exacting memory to Simon’s. In the way James has precise recall of basketball game situations, Simon has it of sounds and songs. “Simon’s memory is prodigious,” Gladwell says. “There were thousands of songs in his head. And thousands more bits of songs—components—which appeared to have been broken down and stacked like cordwood in his imagination.”

We approach the problem of the extended mind from a radically non-dualistperspective. The separation between mind and matter is an artefact of the outdatedmechanistic worldview, which leaves no room for mental phenomena such as agency,intentionality, or feeling. We propose to replace it by an action ontology, which conceivesmind and matter as aspects of the same network of processes. By adopting the intentionalstance, we interpret the catalysts of elementary reactions as agents exhibiting desires,intentions, and sensations. Autopoietic networks of reactions constitute more complex super-agents, which moreover exhibit memory, deliberation and sense-making. In the specific caseof social networks, individual agents coordinate their actions via the propagation ofchallenges. The distributed cognition that emerges from this interaction cannot be situated inany individual brain. This non-dualist, holistic view extends and operationalizes processmetaphysics and Eastern philosophies. It is supported by both mindfulness experiences andmathematical models of action, self-organization, and cognition.

. In a 2004 study byAngelo Maravita and Atsushi Iriki, they discovered that when monkeys andhumans consistently use a tool to extend their reach, such as using a rake toreach an object, certain neural networks in the brain change their “map” of thebody to include the new tool. This fascinating finding reinforces the idea thatexternal tools can and often do become a natural extension of our minds

David Chalmer’s beautiful metaphor of the ‘Extended Mind’ (Chalmers, 1998). Chalmers promotes the idea that media, such as, e.g., smartphones, have already begun to function as an extension to our mind, allowing us to navigate and manage an increasingly complex world

“Noteson paper, or on a computer screen [...] do not make contemporaryphysics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make itpossible” is one of the key takeaways in a contemporary handbookof neuroscientists (Levy 2011, 290) Concluding the discussions inthis book, Levy writes: “In any case, no matter how internalprocesses are implemented, insofar as thinkers are genuinelyconcerned with what enables human beings to perform the

In our current global networked culture that puts so much emphasis on the virtual and the visual, the mind and the body have become detached and ultimately disconnected. Though physical appearance is idolised for its sexual appeal and its social identity, the role of the body in developing a full understanding of the physical world and the human condition has become neglected. The potential of the human body as a knowing entity – with all our senses as well as our entire bodily functions being structured to produce and maintain silent knowledge together – fails to be recognised. It is only through the unity of mind and body that craftsmanship and artistic work can be fully realised. Even those endeavours that are generally regarded as solely intellectual, such as writing and thinking, depend on this union of mental and manual skills.

Basically you take an idea, convert that idea into a character then whenever you want to think about that idea you imagine yourself as that character and then explain that idea to yourself through that character. For example: We first take an idea (lets use automation) Then we turn it into a character (lets see automation as a mass of cogwheels and pistons moving around randomly) Then you imagine yourself as that character and see the world through that characters eyes (in this case we would be disgusted by humanity because of how slow and inefficient it is) Now when we are asked a question about automation or when we want to think about automation we can imagine ourselves becoming that character and we can speak through them to answer that question

Our efforts at education and training, as well as management and leadership, are aimed principally at promoting brain-bound thinking.

This is the theory of the extended mind, introduced more than two decades ago by the philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers. A 1998 article of theirs published in the journal Analysis began by posing a question that would seem to have an obvious answer: “Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” They went on to offer an unconventional response. The mind does not stop at the usual “boundaries of skin and skull,” they maintained. Rather, the mind extends into the world and augments the capacities of the biological brain with outside-the-brain resources.

All four of these extraneural resources — technology, the body, physical space, social interaction — can be understood as mental extensions that allow the brain to accomplish far more than it could on its own.

As the title of a research paper that the Vallée-Tourangeaus wrote with Lisa G. Guthrie puts it, “Moves in the World Are Faster Than Moves in the Head.”

How to Use These Ideas

Paul likes to quote the philosopher who first came up with the idea of the extended mind, Andy Clark, when he says that humans are “intrinsically loopy creatures”.